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PAST AND PRESENT

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PAST AND PRESENT

BY

ROWLAND E. PROTHERO., !@'_Baron

LATE FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD

“‘Writing and ploughing are two different talents ; and
he that writes well must have spent in his study that
time which is necessary to be spent in the fields by him
who will be master of the art of cultivating them.”

JETHRO TULL.

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA

1912

All rights reserved

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PREFACE

English Farming Past and Present is based on an article which
appeared in the Quarterly Review for 1885. The article was
subsequently expanded into a book, published in 1888 by Messrs.
Longman under the title of The Pioneers and Progress of English
Farming.

The book has been out of print for twenty years. Written with
the confidence of comparative youth and inexperience, it expressed
as certainties many opinions which might now be modified, if
not withdrawn. But its motives were two convictions, which time
has rather strengthened than weakened. One was, that the small
number of persons who owned agricultural land might some day
make England the forcing-bed of schemes for land-nationalisation,
which countries, where the ownership of the soil rested on a more
democratic basis, repudiated as destructive of all forms of private
property. The other was, that a considerable increase in the number
of peasant ownerships, in suitable hands, on suitable land, and in
suitable localities, was socially, economically, and agriculturally
advantageous.

Since 1888, the whole field of economic history has been so care-
fully and skilfully cultivated, that another work on a branch of
the subject might appear superfluous. But there still seemed to
be room for a consecutive history of English agriculture, written
from a practical point of view, and tracing the influence of the
progress of the industry on the social conditions of those engaged
in its pursuit. Great economic changes have resulted from small
alterations in the details of manufacturing processes. Similar
changes may often be explained by some little-noticed alterations
in farming practice. The introduction of the field-cultivation of
turnips, for example, was as truly the parent of a social revolution
as the introduction of textile machinery. The main object of
The Pioneers and Progress of English Farming, and, in greater

vi PREFACE

detail, of English Farming Past and Present, is to suggest that
advances in agricultural skill, the adoption of new methods, the
application of new resources, the invention of new implements,
have been, under the pressure of national necessities. powerful
instruments in breaking up older forms of rural society, and in mould-
ing them into their present shape.

Students of economic and social questions—and at the present
day most people are interested in these subjects—will decide
whether the influence of these simple and natural causes has been
greater or less than is suggested. Even those who consider that
their importance is exaggerated, may find in the record of their
progress a useful commentary on the political explanations which
they themselves prefer to adopt. The book may still serve another
purpose. It touches rural life at many different points and at
many different stages. Dwellers in the country are surrounded
by traces of older conditions of society. They may perhaps find,
through English Farming Past and Present, a new interest in piecing
together the fragments of an agricultural past, and in reconstructing,
as in one of the fashionable occupations of the day, a picture of the
Middle Ages or of the eighteenth century in the midst of their
own familiar surroundings.

Now that the book is in print and on the eve of publication, I
feel more acutely than ever the disadvantages under which it has
been prepared. English Farming Past and Present is the by-product
of a life occupied in other pursuits than those of literature. It has
been impossible to work upon it for any continuous period of time.
Written in odd half-hours, it has been often laid aside for weeks
and even months. My thanks are therefore due, in more abundant
measure, to Professor Ashley, Sir Ernest Clarke, and Mr. H. Trus-
tram Eve, who have kindly read the proof-sheets and helped me
with corrections, and above all to Mr. G. H. Holden, who has also
verified the references and prepared the Index.

ROWLAND E. PROTHERO.

September 6, 1912.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.
THE MANORIAL SYSTEM OF FARMING.

Virgin soils: traces of sites of early villages: “‘ wild field-grass *’ husbandry ;
the permanent division of pasture from tillage ; manors and trade-guilds ;
origin of manors; the thirteenth century manor and village; divisions
of land according to differences of tenure; villages isolated and self-
sufficing ; importance of labour-rents in the economy of a manor; the
cultivation of the demesne; the crops grown; the live-stock; miscel-
laneous produce; the manorial courts: the social grades among the
villagers ; the system of open-field farming ; the arable land ; the meadows ;
the hams; the pasture commons; the prevalence and permanence of
the open-field system ; the domestic industries of the village. Pp. 1-30

CHAPTER II.
THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR. 1300-1485.

Great landlords as farmers: horrors of winter scarcity: gradual decay of
the manorial system and the increased struggle for life: aspects of the
change : common rights over cultivated and uncultivated land : tendency
towards separate occupation: substitution of labour-rents for money-
rents; the Black Death; Labour legislation, and its effect; Manor of
Castle Combe and Berkeley Estates; new relations of landlords and
tenants substituted for old relations of feudal lords and dependents ;
tenant-farmers and free labourers; leases and larger farms; increase of
separate occupations : William Paston and Hugh Latimer; wage-earning
labourers ; voluntary surrender of holdings; freedom of movement and
of contract. Pp. 31-54

CHAPTER III.

FARMING FOR PROFIT: PASTURE AND SHEEP-
GRAZING. 1485-1558.

The passing of the Middle Ages: enclosures in the sixteenth and eighteenth
centuries compared ; the commercial impulse and its results ; conversion

viii CONTENTS

of tillage to pasture: enclosures and depopulation: legislation against
enclosures ; literary attack on enclosures; the practical defence of en-
closures: larger farms in separate occupation: loss of employment ;
enclosures equitably arranged, or enforced by tyranny; legal powers of
landowners; open-field farmers not the chief sufferers by enclosures ;
scarcity of employment and rise in prices; the new problem of poverty :
the ranks of vagrants; the Elizabethan fraternity of vagabonds.

Pp. 55-77

CHAPTER IV.
THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH.

Paternal despotism: restoration of the purity of the coinage; a definite
commercial policy: revival of the wool trade: new era of prosperity
among landed gentry and occupiers of land: a time of adversity for small
landowners and wage-earning labourers: Statute of Apprentices; hiring
fairs; growth of agricultural literature: Fitzherbert and Tusser: their
picture of Tudor farming: defects of the open-field system : experience of
the value of enclosures; improvement in farming: Barnaby Googe ;
Sir Hugh Plat: progress in the art of gardening. Pp. 78-102

CHAPTER V.

FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION. 1603-1660,

FARMING UNDER THE FIRST STEWARTS AND THE
COMMONWEALTH.

Promise of agricultural progress checked by the Civil War: agricultural
writers and their suggestions : Sir Richard Weston on turnips and clover :
conservatism of English farmers; their dislike to book-farming not un-
reasonable: unexhausted improvements discussed; Walter Blith on
drainage: attempts to drain the fens in the eastern counties ; the resist-
ance of the fenmen: new views on commons: Winstanley’s claims;
enclosures advocated as a step towards agricultural improvement.

Pp. 103-129

CHAPTER VI.

THE LATER STEWARTS AND THE REVOLUTION.
1660-1700.

Worlidge’s Systema Agriculturae (1669): improvements suggested by agri-
cultural writers ; tyranny of custom; contempt for book-farming ; slow
progress in farming skill; general standard low; horses, cattle, sheep,
and pigs in the seventeenth century ; want of leaders; growing influence

CONTENTS ix

of landowners; the finance of the Restoration, and the abolition of
military tenures ; |legislation to promote agriculture; Gregory King on
the State and Condition of England and Wales in 1696: the distribution
of population and wealth. Pp. 130-147

CHAPTER VII.
JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND. 1700-1760.

Agricultural progress in the eighteenth century ; jenelosures necessary to
advance ; vocates and opponents of the enclosing movement; area
of uncultivated land and of land cultivated in open-fields ; defects of the
open-field system as a method of farming ; pasture commons as adjuncts
to open-field holdings; the necessary lead in agricultural progress given
by large landowners and large farmers; procedure in enclosures by Act
of Parliament: varying dates at which districts have been enclosed :
influence of soil and climate in breaking up or maintaining the open-field
system : the Hast Midland and North Eastern group of counties : improved
methods and increased resources of farming; Jethro Tull the “ greatest
individual improver ” ; Lord Townshend’s influence on Norfolk husbandry.

Pp. 148-175

CHAPTER VIII.

THE STOCK-BREEDER’S ART AND ROBERT BAKEWELL.
1725-1795.

Necessity for improving the live-stock of the country; sheep valued for
their wool, cattle for power of draught or yield of milk; beef and mutton
the growing need: Robert Bakewell the agricultural opportunist ; his
experiments with the Black Horse, the Leicester Longhorns, and the New
Leicesters ; rapid progress of stock-breeding: sacrifice of wool to mutton.

Pp. 176-189

CHAPTER IX.

ARTHUR YOUNG AND THE DIFFUSION OF
KNOWLEDGE. 1760-1800. '

The counties distinguished for the best farming : Hertfordshire, Essex, Suffolk,
Norfolk, Leicestershire: the low general standard ; Arthur Young; his
crusade against bad farming, and the hindrances to progress; waste
land ; the ‘‘ Goths and Vandals’ of open-field farmers: want of capital
and education ; insecurity of tenure ; prejudices and traditional practices ;
impassable roads; rapid development of manufacture demands a change
of agricultural front: Young’s advocacy of capitalist landlords and large
tenant-farmers. Pp. 190-206

x CONTENTS

CHAPTER X.

LARGE FARMS AND CAPITALIST FARMERS.
1780-1813.

Agricultural enthusiasm at the close of the eighteenth century ; high prices
of agricultural produce ; the causes of the advance; increased demand
and cessation of foreign supplies ; the state of the currency ; rapid advance
of agriculture on the new lines of capitalist farming; impulse given to
enclosing movement and the introduction of improved practices; Davy’s
Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry ; the work of large landlords: Coke
of Norfolk. Pp. 207-223

CHAPTER XI.

OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS
1793-1815.

Condition of open-field arable land and pasture commons as described by the
Reporters to the Board of Agriculture, 1793-1815; (1) The North and
North-Western District ; (2) West Midland and South-Western District
(3) South-Eastern and Midland District; (4) Eastern and North-Eastern
District ; (5) the Fens; the cumulative effect of the evidence ; procedure
under private Enclosure Acts ; its defects and cost ; the General enclosure
Act of 1801; the Inclosure Commissioners ; the new Board of Agriculture.

Pp. 224-252

CHAPTER XII.
} THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS.

Difficulty in deciding on the good or bad influence of the Corn Laws ; restrie-
tions on home as well as on foreign trade in corn ; gradual abandonment of
the attempt to secure just prices by legislation ; means adopted to steady
prices ; prohibition both of exports and of imports: the bounty on home-
grown corn; the system-established in 1670 and 1689 lasts till 1815; its
general effect ; influence of seasons from 1689 to 1764, and from 1765 to
1815; difficulty of obtaining foreign supplies during the Napoleonic wars ;
practical monopoly in the home market: small margin of home supply
owing to growth of population; exaggerated effect on prices of good or
bad harvests; protection after 1815; demand by agriculturists for fair
profits ; changed conditions of supply ; repeal of the Corn Laws, 1846.

Pp. 253-274

CONTENTS xi

CHAPTER XIII.
HIGHWAYS.

Difficulties of communication; influence of natural waterways on inland
trade; artificial waterways and canal construction; Roman roads ;
mediaeval road-repair: roads in Tudor times; introduction of turnpikes
at the Restoration; condition of eighteenth century roads; failure of
statutory labour; rival theories of Telford and M‘Adam; extinction of
turnpike trusts ; highway rates ; main roads. Pp. 275-289

V CHAPTER XIV.
THE RURAL POPULATION. 1780-1813.

Effect of enclosures on the rural population ; no necessary reduction in the
number of small owners, but rather an increase; consolidation of farms,
either by purchase from small owners, or by throwing tenancies together ;
the strict letter of the law; small occupiers become landless labourers ;
depopulation of villages when tillage was abandoned for pasture: scarcity
of employment in open-field villages ; the literary controversy ; the mate-
rial injury inflicted upon the rural poor by the loss of the commons; no
possible equivalent in cash-value: the moral injury; the simultaneous
decay of domestic industries; the rapid rise after 1790 in the price of
provisions ; a substantial advance in agricultural wages. Pp. 290-315

yCHAPTER XV.
AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION AND THE POOR LAW.
1813-1837.

War taxation : peace and beggary : slow recovery of agriculture ; the harvest
of 1813; reality and extent of distress; the fall of prices; bankruptcies
of tenant-farmers; period of acute depression, 1814-36; ruin of small
owners ; misery of agricultural labourers ; reduction in wages and scarcity
of employment; allowances from the rates; general pauperisation : the
new Poor Law, 1834, and its administration. Pp. 316-331

CHAPTER XVI.
TITHES.

The incidence of tithes under the old law; the historical origin of tithes ;
a free-will offering; a customary payment; the appeal to conscience ;

xii CONTENTS

ecclesiastical penalties for non-payment; a legal liability: tithes as
parochia] endowments; the Reformation; the collection of tithes in
kind unpopular and expensive to tithe-owners; substituted forms of
payment; the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 ; its obiect and machinery.

Pp. 332-345

+ CHAPTER XVIL
HIGH FARMING. 1837-1874.

Condition of agriculture in 1837; current explanation of the distress; pre-

paration for a new start in farming ; legislative changes ; development of

a railway system; live-stock in 1837; the general level of farming ;

foundation of the Royal Agricultural Society; uotable improvements,

1837-74; extension of drainage; purchase of feeding stufis; discovery

of artificial fertilisers ; mechanical improvements and inventions ; Repeal

of the Corn Laws; the golden age from 1853 to the end of 1862; rapid
progress in the “ Fifties’’; pedigree mania in stock-breeding.

Pp. 346-373

CHAPTER XVITI.
ADVERSITY. 1874-1912.

Industrial crisis; special difficulties of farmers; the weather, and foreign
competition ; Richmond Commission, 1879-82; second agricultural crisis,
1891-99; Royal Commission of 1893; changes in farming; the day of
small things; progress; the aid of science; management of dairy pro-
duce; agricultural education; effects of present elementary education.

Pp. 374-392

CHAPTER XIX.
CONCLUSION.

1888 and 1912: political agitation then and now; the situation contrasted
and compared ; the position of landowners; of tithe-owners; of tenant-
farmers; tenant-right as a defence against sales ; agricultural labourers,
their slow progress between 1834 and 1884, and their Unions; their
improved position in 1912. The problem of the future ; the reconstruction
of village life: the necessity of an agricultural policy: the prospect of
increased burdens on agricultural land. Pp. 393-418

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX I.
Chronological list of Agricultural Writers down to 1700. Pp. 419-430

INS

CONTENTS xiii

APPENDIX II.
The Poor Law from 1601 to 1834. Pp. 431-438

APPENDIX III. Pp. 439-452
THE CORN LAWS.

. Prices of Wheat, 1646-1911 (p. 440).

. The Principal Acts relating to the Corn Trade (p. 442).
The Assize of Bread (p. 448).

. Exports and Imports of Corn, 1697-1801 (p. 452).

. Bounties paid on Exports of Corn, 1697-1765 (p. 452).

both -

APPENDIX IV.
Tables of Estimates by Gregory King and Charles Davenant. Pp. 453-455

APPENDIX V.
Estimates of Acreage and Cropping, 1808, 1827. P. 456

APPENDIX VI.
Collection of Tithes. Pp. 457-459

APPENDIX VII.

The Agricultural Population according to Census Returns of 1851, 1861,
1871, 1881, 1891, 1901. Pp. 460-461

APPENDIX VIII.
Imports of Food, 1866-1911. Pp. 462-463

: APPENDIX IX.
Agricultural Statistics, 1866-1911. Pp. 464-467

APPENDIX X.

Agricultural Wages, 1768-70, 1824, 1837, 1850-1, 1860, 1869-70, 1882,
1892, 1898, 1910. Pp. 468-470

INDEX. Pp. 471-504.

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vi.

CHAPTER I.

THE MANORIAL SYSTEM OF FARMING.

Virgin soils: traces of sites of early villages: ‘“ wild field-grass”’ husbandry ;
the permanent division of pasture from tillage; manors and trade-guilds ;
origin of manors; the thirteenth century manor and village; divisions
of land according to differences of tenure; villages isolated and self-
sufficing ; importance of labour-rents in the economy of a manor; the
cultivation of the demesne; the crops grown; the live-stock; miscel-
laneous produce; the manorial courts: the social grades among the
villagers ; the system of open-field farming ; the arable land ; the meadows ;
the hams; the pasture commons; the prevalence and permanence of
the open-field system ; the domestic industries of the village.

IMPROVEMENTS in the art and science of English agriculture were
in its infancy dependent on the exhaustion of virgin soils. So
long as land was abundant, and the people few or migratory, no
rotation of crops was needed. Fresh land could be ploughed each
year. It was only when numbers had increased and settlements
became permanent, that farmers were driven to devise methods of
cultivation which restored or maintained the fertility of their
holdings.

The progress of farming is recorded in legal documents, in manorial
accounts, in agricultural literature. But the story is also often
preserved in the external aspect which the land, the villages, ‘or the
hedgerows bear in the twentieth century. Dry uplands, where the
least labour told the most, were first occupied and cultivated ;
rich valleys, damp and filled with forest growth, remained unin-
habited and untilled. In spite of difficulties of water-supply,
light or sandy soils, or chalky highlands seem to have been the
sites of the oldest villages. Patches of the lower slopes of downs
were cleared of self-sown beech, and sheltered dips tilled for corn ;
the high ground behind was grazed by flocks and herds ; the beech
woods supplied mast for the swine. Salisbury Plain, a century

ago, bore no sign of human life except the proverbial ‘thief or
A

2 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM

twain ’’—no contemporary mark of the hand of man but the
gallows and their appendages. Yet here are to be found traces of
numerous villages. Scored on the sides of the Wiltshire, Dorset,
Hampshire, and Sussex downs, “ Lynches,” ‘ Lynchets,” or
“* Daisses,”—grass-grown terraces or benches,—still run horizontally,
one above the other, along the slopes. The “ elf-furrows ”’ of Scot-
land seem to record a similar occupation of hill sites. Local
tradition attributes their formation to spade husbandry. Marshall,
in 1797, suggested, but only to reject, the operation of the plough.
Fifty years later, Poulett Scrope adopted a similar suggestion ;
more recently Seebohm revived the same theory. Whatever
explanation of the formation of these terraces may be correct,
they indelibly indicate the sites of the earliest settlements, and
the nature of the soil first selected for tillage.

The most primitive form of agriculture is that known as “ wild
field-grass ’’ husbandry. Joint occupation and joint tillage were
probably its characteristics, as they afterwards were of tribal or
village communities. The essential difference lies in this. In the
open fields of the village, pasturage and tillage continue to be
separated ; grass-land always remains meadow or pasture; it is
never broken up for tillage. Under the more primitive form of
convertible husbandry, fresh tracts of grass were successively
taken in, ploughed, and tilled for corn. As the soil became ex-
hausted, they reverted to pasture. Such a practice may belong to
some portions of the Celtic race, or to nomadic stages of civilisa-
tion. In 1804 Marshall thought that he could trace the “ wild
field-grass ” system in a custom of the south-western counties. In
some districts lords of the manor enjoyed rights of letting portions
of the grass commons to be ploughed up, cultivated for corn, and
after two years thrown back into pasture. Over the whole country,
from the Tamar to the eastern border of Dorsetshire, he found
that open commons, such as the wide expanse of Yarcombe and
the hills above Bridport, which from time immemorial had never
known the plough, were distinctly marked with the ridge and
furrow. Other features of rural life, which a century ago were
more peculiar to the south-west of England, suggest that arable
tillage by village communities, if it ever prevailed in this district,
was soon exchanged for a system of convertible husbandry better
suited to a damp climate. The cultivated land is divided into
little patches by the high Devonshire earthwork, or hedge; the

PERMANENT SEPARATION OF TILLAGE FROM GRASS 3

large open-fields of the parish can rarely be traced ; fewer of the
inhabitants are collected into villages, more are scattered in single
houses or tiny hamlets. Cornwall and parts of Devonshire, like
Brittany, are a country of hedges, and of a Celtic race.

This “ wild field-grass ”’ husbandry was displaced in most parts
of England by the permanent separation of arable from pasture
land. The change indicates an advance towards a more settled
state of society, but not necessarily an advance in agricultural
practice. The fixed division of tillage and grass may have been
introduced into this country by a people accustomed, like the
Romans or the Anglo-Saxons, to a drier and less variable climate.
If so, it was on this alien system that the agricultural organisation
of the mediaeval manor was based. On it also were founded the
essential features of those village communities which at one time
tilled two-thirds of the cultivated soil of England, survived the
criticism of Fitzherbert in the sixteenth century, outlived the
onslaught of Arthur Young in the eighteenth century, clung to
the land in spite of thousands of enclosure acts, were carried to the
New World by the Pilgrim Fathers, and linger to this day in, for
instance, the Nottinghamshire village of Lexington, where half
the land of the parish is tilled by an agricultural association of
partners.

In the early stages of history, the law itself was powerless to
protect individual independence or to safeguard individual rights.
Agriculture, like other industries, was therefore organised on prin-
ciples of graduated dependence and collective responsibility. —
Mediaeval manors, in fact, resembled trade guilds, and it would >
be difficult to frame an organisation which, given the weakness of
law and the infancy of agriculture, was better calculated to effect
the object of mutual help and protection. Communities grouped
together in villages were less liable to attack than detached farm-
houses and buildings ; common methods of farming facilitated that
continuous cultivation which otherwise might have been interrupted
by the frequent absence of the able-bodied men on military expedi-
tions ; the observance of common rules of management may have
hindered improvement, but, if strictly enforced, it also prevented
deterioration. Thus the system was suitable to the times and their
conditions.

The origin of the legal relation of manors to village communities
lies outside the scope of the present enquiry. It concerns tenures

4 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM

rather than systems of cultivation. Two theories explain the rights
of manorial lords and rights of common exercised over manorial
lands. The legal theory, in its crudest form, is that the lord of the
manor is the absolute owner of the soil of his manor, and that rights
acquired over any part of it by freeholders and tenants are acquired
against him, and originate in his grant or sufferance. The historical
~ theory, stated baldly, is that self-governing, independent com-
munities of freemen originally owned the land in common, and were
gradually reduced to dependence by one of their members, or by a
conqueror, who became the lord of the soil. There seems to be no
doubt that individual ownership belongs to an earlier stage of
civilisation than communal ownership. But if the second theory is
correct, the legal position of the lord of the manor represents a
series of encroachments, which transformed the Mark of freemen
into the Mark of bondmen, and changed the rights of the villagers
over the wastes of the district into customary rights of user over
the lord’s soil. Questions of the origin and antiquity of manors,
and the extent to which they prevailed before the Norman Conquest,
have been to a great degree reopened by recent studies. Seebohm,
for example, practically supported the legal view by historical
argument. He traced the feudal manor to the Roman villa, with
the lord’s estate as the centre round which clustered cultivators,
who tilled the soil under servile or semi-servile conditions. This
system, according to his view, was taken over by the Anglo-Saxon
invaders, and the agrarian results of the Teutonic occupation may
be summed up in the transfer of the Roman villa, with its servile
labourers, to the conquerors. As a complete explanation of social
development the legal theory, in spite of this historical support,
seems inadequate. But whether the early stages of village com-
munities reveal a movement from serfdom or originated in freedom,
whether their relations to manors represent encroachments by the
lord or advances by the serf, whether the rights of agrarian associa-
tions underlay, or were acquired against, the manorial rights of the
feudal baron—whether, in other words, the land-law of the noble
became the land-law of the people, or the reverse—is here immaterial.
Roughly and generally speaking, the immediate lordship of the land
farmed by a village community, including the wastes and commons,
was, after the Norman Conquest, vested in the lord of the manor,
subject to regulated rights enjoyed by its members.

On a manorial estate, at the beginning of the thirteenth century,

THE MANORIAL BUILDINGS 5

only the church, the manor-house, and perhaps the mill, rose out
conspicuously. There were no detached, isolated farm-houses ; but
the remaining buildings of the village, grouped together in a sort
of street, were the homes of the peasantry, who occupied and
cultivated the greater part of the land. At some little distance
from the village stood the manor hall or grange, with its out-
buildings, garden, and fishpond, surrounded by clay-built walls
with thatched tops. The style and extent of the buildings depended
on whether the house was the permanent or occasional residence
of the lord; they also varied with the importance of the manor,
and the wealth of its owner. The house itself was built either of
timber and clay, or of stone, for brickmaking was still a forgotten
art. It often consisted of a single hall, plastered inside, open to
the roof, and earth-floored, which served as court of justice, dining-
room, and bedchamber. At one end of the central room was a
stable; at the other a chamber, kitchen, or larder. Below one
part of the ground floor was a cellar; above another part was,
perhaps, a “ solar,’ or parlour, approached by an outside staircase.
If the manor was sufficiently important, there were probably added
a detached building for the farm servants, and a chamber for the
bailiff. The outbuildings consisted of bake-house, stables, dairy,
cattle and poultry houses, granary, and dove-cote. Some of the
oldest specimens of domestic architecture are granaries, like Hazel-
ton or Caleot in Gloucestershire, or the dove-cotes which still in
country districts mark the former sites of manor-houses. Repairs
of the walls and buildings of the manor-house were among the
labour services of the tenantry, who dug, tempered, and daubed
the clay, cut and carted the timber, and gathered the straw or reeds
for thatching. Where technical skill was needed they were aided
by craftsmen, who either held land in reward for their special
services, or, on the smaller manors, were hired for the occasion.
Tufts of trees, conspicuous in the hedgeless expanse of arable
land by which they were surrounded, marked the sites of villages,
as they still do in the high table-land of the Pays de Caux. Under
their shelter clustered the homes of the peasantry, clay-walled,
open-roofed, earth-floored, chimneyless sheds, covered in with
straw or reeds or heather, and consisting of a single room. Here,
divided by a hurdle or wattle partition, lived, not only the human
inhabitants, but their cows, pigs, and poultry. Close by were the
tofts and crofts of the open-field farmers, each with its miniature

6 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM

hay-rick and straw-stack ; and the cottages and curtilages of the
cottagers, “‘fencéd al aboute with stikkes.”’ Here were the scanty
gardens in which grew the vegetables, few but essential to the health
of a population which lived almost entirely on salted meat and
fish—often half-cured and half-putrid. These homesteads were in
early times the only property held by members of the township in
exclusive separate occupation. They were also, at first, the only
permanent enclosures on the commonable land. But, as agri-
culture advanced, pasture paddocks (“ gerstuns”’ or “‘ garstons ”’)
for rearing stock, calves, or fattening beasts, or for the working
oxen, which could not endure his “ warke to labour all daye, and
then to be put to the commons or before the herdsman,” were
enclosed in the immediate neighbourhood of the village. In these
enclosures, or “happy garstons ”’ as they were called at Aston
Boges, were held the village merrymakings, the rush-bearings, the
May games, the summerings at St. John’s Eve, the public break-
fasts, and the distribution of bread and ale in Rogation week.
The land comprised in a thirteenth century manor was generally
divided into four main portions, and, speaking generally, was cul-
tivated on co-operative principles; the demesne or “ board”
land, reserved for the lord’s personal use, surrounding the manor-
house, and forming the smaller portion of the whole ; the free land,
occupied by freemen holding by military service, or by some
form of fixed rent in money or in kind ; the unfree land, occupied
by various classes of bondmen, holding by produce-rents and
labour services which varied with the custom of the manor; the
common pastures and untilled wastes on which the tenants of the
manor and the occupiers of certain cottages, in virtue of their
holdings, fed their live stock. This right of pasture must be
clearly distinguished from those rights which, at certain seasons of
the year, were exercised by the associated partners over the cul-
tivated arable and meadow lands of the village farm. Thus the
lord’s demesne, using the word in its narrower sense, might be
kept in hand, or let on lease to free or unfree tenants, or thrown

1 By “village farm ”’ is meant the land in the village which was occupied
by an association of partners, who were bound by the same rules of cultiva-
tion, held intermixed strips of arable land over which at certain seasons the
whole body exercised common rights, annually received allotted portions of
meadow for hay, and enjoyed, in virtue of their arable holdings, the right to
turn out stock on the common pasture. This open-field system of farming
is described pp. 23-27.

LABOUR MORE NEEDED THAN MONEY f!

into the village farm, or dealt with as to portions in each of these
three ways. But whether the land was treated as a compact
whole, like a modern home-farm, or whether the landlord, as a
shareholder in the village association, allowed it to be cut up into
strips and intermixed with other holdings, the demesne was mainly
cultivated by the labour services of the unfree peasantry. The
rest of the land of the manor, forming the larger portion of the
cultivated area, was farmed by village partners, whose rent chiefly
consisted in the labour, more or less definite in amount, which they
were obliged to perform on the lord’s demesne.

In this method of cultivating a manorial estate there are many
contrasts with the modern system. The three-fold division of the
agricultural interests into landlord, tenant farmer, and wage-
earning labourer was practically unknown. Landowner and tenant-
labourer owned, occupied, and cultivated the soil, and the gradual
relaxation of the labourer’s tenure of the land, and the inter-
position of the tenant farmer between the two existing classes,
sum up the early social history of English farming. In the thirteenth
century, muscles were more essential to the prosperity of the land-
lord than money rents. The cultivators of the soil grew their
produce, not for sale, but for their own consumption. Each manor
or village was isolated and self-sufficmg. Only in the neighbour-
hood of towns was there any market for the produce of the farm.
Few manufactured articles were bought. Salt, tar, iron (bought in
four-pound bars), mill-stones, steel for tipping the edges of imple-
ments, canvas for the sails of the wind-mill, cloths for use in the
dairy, in the malthouse, or in the grange, together with the dresses
of the inhabitants of the hall, and a few vessels of brass, copper, or
earthenware, satisfied the simple needs of the rural population.
Hands were therefore more required than money on manorial»
estates. If the manor was well stocked with labour, the land paid ;
when the stock of labour shrank, the profits dwindled. It was in
order to retain a sufficient supply of labour on the land that bond-
men were restrained from leaving the manor to assume the tonsure
of the clerk or the flat cap of the apprentice, to become soldiers
or to work outside the manor. Even their marriages were carefully
controlled by licences. It was, again, in order to exact and super-
vise the due performance of labour services that the lord of the
manor maintained his large official staff—his seneschal, if he owned
several manors, his steward, his bailiff, and the various foremen of

8 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM

the labourers, such as the reeve, the hayward, the head-reaper,
and the granger. But with the thirteenth century begins the
practice of keeping estate accounts, in which the amount and cash
values of the labour services are entered. Thus the uncertainty
of villein-tenure was modified, and the means were prepared for
commuting obligations to work into their money equivalents.
Already the causes were operating which hastened the process, and
changed agriculture from a self-sufficing industry into a commercial
system of farming for profit. Population was increasing; trade
was growing; urban classes, divorced from rural pursuits, were
forming ; means of communication were improving ; money taxes
took the place of personal services; the standard of living rose ;
coin was needed, not only to meet the demands of the government,
but to buy the luxuries of more civilised life.

The obligations of the peasantry to cultivate the demesne varied,

cee dS neg oe rae

not only with local customs, but with the seasons. Their most
important services were the autumnal, Lenten, and summer plough-
ings on the three fields, into which the arable land of the demesne
was generally divided. The crops grown were, as winter seeds,
wheat and rye, and, as spring seeds, oats, barley, beans, peas, or
vetches. In smaller quantities, flax, hemp, and saffron were locally
raised in separate plots. Roots, clover and artificial grasses were
still unknown. Rotations of crops, as they are now understood, were
therefore impossible. The soil was rested by fallowing the one-
half, or the one-third, of the arable land required by the two or
the three course system. Red rivet, or a lost white variety, was
then recommended for wheat-sowing on light land, red or white
pollard for heavy soils, “ gray”? wheat for clays. But on the
tenants’ land, rye was the chief grain crop. It is the hardiest,
grows on the poorest soils, makes the toughest straw. Rye was then
the bread-stuff of the English peasantry, as it still is in Northern
Europe. The flour of wheat and rye were often mixed together,
and bread made in this form was called “ maslin.”! It retained
its moisture longer than pure wheaten bread, and, as Fynes Moryson

1 Lat. miatilio; ‘“‘mestilon,’’ anon. author of Hosebonderie (thirteenth
century); “‘ miscellin,’’ Harrison (sixteenth century); “‘ massledine,’ Henry
Best (1641); ‘‘ mashelson,’”? Yorkshire (1797). In The Compleat Farmer
(1760) it is called ‘‘ maislen”’; but the writer says that it is “ ill husbandry
to grow wheat and rye together.”’ Fitzherbert (1523) recommends rye and
wheat to be sown together as the surest crop to grow and good for the husband-
man’s household. But he does not believe in the slowness of rye in ripening.

THE THREE PLOUGHINGS 9

says in his Itinerary (1617), was used by labourers because it “‘ abode
longer in the stomach and was not so soon digested with their
labour.”” Wheat and rye were sometimes sown together. But as
rye was slower to ripen, the better practice was to sow it alone and
earlier, lest, as Tusser (1557) writes, ‘‘ rye tarry wheat, till it sheds
as it stands.”’ The mixed cultivation was, however, recommended
as a cure for mildew, and for this reason prevailed in Yorkshire
in 1797. Barley was the drink-corn, as rye was the bread-corn,
of the Middle Ages. It was of two kinds. The head with two rows
of grain seems to have been used exclusively for brewing; the
coarser four-rowed head, known as “ drage,’’ was used partly for
brewing, partly for feeding pigs and poultry. Barley and oats
were often sown together. In the North, oats were extensively
cultivated ; but they were grey-awned, thin, and poor. In the
Midlands and South of England they were comparatively rare on
tenants’ land.

The fallows were three times ploughed in preparation for wheat
and rye. The seed began to be sown after Lammas Day (August
12),1 and at latest was completed by Hallowmas (November 1).
For oats, beans, and peas, the land was ploughed and the seed sown
between the Feast of Purification (February 2) and Easter. Oats
were said to be best sown in “the dust of March.” “On St.
Valentine’s Day cast beans in clay. But on St. Chad sowe good
or bad.”’ That is to say, the time for sowing beans was between
February 14 and March 2. Barley came last. The land was
ploughed and sown between Hoke-tide (the third Tuesday after
Easter) and Pentecost. The ploughings were performed, and the
teams supplied and driven, partly by the servants of the demesne,
partly by the tenants. Sometimes ploughmen seem to have been
hired. The harrowings were similarly provided for, and the
harrow, often a hawthorn tree, weighted on its upper side with
logs, was supplied from the lord’s waste. Here also harrowers
seem to have been sometimes specially hired. In this case they
possibly provided their own home-constructed implements with
sharp points or teeth like the modern type of harrow. When the
fallows were first broken up, as was then the practice, in March,
or when the land was prepared for barley, the ground was often
so hard that the clods had to be subsequently broken. For this

1The Julian calendar was in force. To make the dates correspond with
those of the present Gregorian calendar, twelve days have to be added.

10 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM

purpose the ploughman, holding the principal hale of the plough
in his left hand, carried in his right a “clotting beetle,” or
‘‘maul,” such as that which is depicted in the Cotton MSS.
A “ Dover-court beetle”? was a necessary tool in the days of
Tusser ; and Plot, whose Natural History of Oxfordshire appeared
in the seventeenth century, recommends its use after the land was
harrowed.

The amount of wheat, rye, beans, and peas usually sown to the
acre was only two bushels; and of oats and, strangely enough, of
barley, four bushels. The yield of wheat_rarely exceeded _five-
fold, or ten bushels to the acre; that of the leguminous crops

ranged from three- t to six-fold, or oe six to twelve bushels to the
acre; that of oats and barley varied from three- to four-fold, or
isin, twelve to sixteen bushels to the acre. Considerable care was
exercised in the choice and change of the seed-corn, which was
often one of the produce-rents of the tenants. On the Berkeley
Estates (1321) the seed v was changed every second or third year ;
the upland_corn being sown in the vale, and vice versa. Wheat
rarely followed a spring grain crop. If it did, it may be supposed
that it received the greater part of the manure mixed with earth,
which the tenants carted from the demesne yard, and spread on
the manor farm. From the point of view of manuring the land,
the right of folding was a valuable priv ivilege. Tenants, unless they
purchased a licence to fold their sheep on the and they occupied,
were often obliged to feed_and fold their flocks_on the lord’s_land
for fallow or in his own fold. Sometimes the herbage of the lord’s
land for fallow was sold to a sheep-master to be depastured on the
land. Lime was used on heavy clays, or to destroy moss. The
value of marl it in improving the texture of sandy soils and some
kinds of clays was appreciated. On the Berkeley ‘Estates it was
first used in the fortieth year of Henry III. But the cost was
excessive. ‘‘ Marl,’ says Fitzherbert,! ‘“‘is an excellent manure,
and .. . exceeding chargeable.”’ Sea sand was used near the coast ;
soot and even street refuse were employed on home farms. Drain-
age, except in the form of ridging the surface of wet soils, was
rarely practised. Sometimes, as Palladius recommends (Book VI.
st. 6), shallow trenches filled with gravel, stones, or hollow alder
stems, and turfed over, were cut, and, on the manors belonging to

1 Fitzherbert’s Book of Husbandry, book i. ec. 20 (ed. 1598). For agri-
cultural literature, see Chronological List in Appendix I.

MEDIAEVAL HARVESTINGS 11

_the Collegiate body of St. Paul’s Cathedral, it was one of the labour
services to clean out the ditches. But the science of deep drainage
made little progress before the nineteenth century. Beans were
often dibbed ; but all other seed was sown broadcast. The actual
labour of sc sowing was probably performed by_the lord’s bailiff, or
the hayward, with his own hand, as, at the beginning of tho last
century, all seed was sown by the farmer himself. The hoeing ¢ and
the weeding of the crops were among the labour services of the
tenants. In cleaning land the maxim was ancient :
“*Who weeds in May
Throws all away,”
and the crops were generally weeded in June or the first few days
of July. Walter of Henley! (thirteenth century) gives St. John’s
Day (June 24) as the earliest date for cleaning the land. “ If,”
he says, ‘‘ you cut thistles fifteen days or eight before St. John’s
Day, for each one will come two or three.”” On a Suffolk manor,
in the fourteenth century, sixty “sarclers,’ or weeders, were
employed in one day, armed, if the weather was dry, with a hook
or forked stick, and, in wet weather, with nippers.

The meadows of the demesne were mown, and the hay made,
carted, and put_on the manorial ricks, by the labour services of
the tenants. They also reaped, bound, gathered, loaded, carted,
and 1 stacked the corn crops in the lord’s grange. They also threshed
the corn, and winnowed it, unless, as was sometimes the case, the
duty of winnowing fell to the dairywoman, or “ Daye.” If any
corn_was sent for sale to the markets, it was carried there by the
labour services of the tenants, in their carts drawn by their teams.
Harvestings in the Middle Ages were picturesque scenes of bustle
and of merriment among the thousands to whom they meant the
return of plenty. On 250 acres at Hawstead in Suffolk, towards the
close of the fourteenth century, were grown wheat, oats, barley,
peas, and “ bolymong,”’ a mixture of tares and oats. The grain
crops were cut and housed in two days. On the first day appeared
thirty tenants to perform their ‘“‘ bedrepes,’’ and 244 reapers; on
the second day, the thirty tenants and 239 reapers, pitchers, and
stackers. Many of this assembly were the smaller peasantry on
the manor; the rest were the lord’s farm servants, together with

1 Walter of Henley’s Husbandry, together with an anonymous Husbandry,
Seneschaucie, and Robert Grosseteste’s Rules; ed. E. Lamond, 1890. For
agricultural literature, see Chronological List in Appendix I.

12 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM

wandering bands of “‘ cockers ”’ or harvesters, who had already begun
to travel the country at harvest time. A cook, brewer, and baker
were hired to supply dinner at nine and supper at five. Reapers
were organised in bands, or “‘setts,”’ of five. The anonymous author
of Hosebonderie1 (thirteenth century) calculates that each band
could reap and bind two acres a day. Barley and oats, as well as
peas and beans, were generally mown ; rye and wheat were reaped.
But the reaping, as in Roman times, seems to have consisted of
two operations : the first was to cut the ears, the second to remove
part of the straw for thatching, or to be used as forage for cattle,
as litter for strewing the sheep-house, folds, and yards, or as bedding
for men. Often the value of the straw of thin short corn hardly
paid tor the expense of removal, and the stubble was either grazed
or burned on the ground, or ploughed in.

The most important crops of the farm were the corn crops of
wheat, rye, and _ barley, which were raised for human food and
drink. Their consumption, especially if the lord of the manor
lived on the estate, was enormous. Domestic households were
considerable, and often only the bailiff was paid money wages.
Rations were also allowed to “tenants when performing many of
their services. Though the manual and team work of the tenants
provided most of the labour of the farm, the lord also employed

occupied in the care of live- ee Such were the horseman or
waggoner, oxherd or ploughman,. cowherd, shepherd, swineherd,
warrener, and keepers of hawks and dogs, whose wages were mostly
paid in kind. There were, besides, other servants in husbandry,
hired for special occasions, whose food and drink formed a.- large
portion of their payment. The granary was, therefore, rarely so
full that any surplus remained for sale. For such ready-money as
he needed, the lord looked mainly to the produce of his live-stock.
For their consumption were grown the remaining crops—the hay,
beans, peas, and oats; though oats were not only used for human
food, but in some districts were brewed into inferior beer.
Horse-farms appear in some estate accounts ; but they probably
supplied the “‘ great horse ’’ used for military purposes. On an
ordinary farm the horses used for farm-work were mostly home-
bred, and were divided into cart-horses, and—under the names of
stotts, “‘affers,” or “ avers ”—plough-horses. Colts, not needed

1 Hosebonderie in Walter of Henley’s Husbandry, ed. E. Lamond, 1890.

PLOUGH-OXEN 13

to keep up the suige were sold. Plough-teams were seldom. made
oxen._ But, as a ‘rule, oxen were pisfomed to dati Though
horses worked more quickly, when the ploughman allowed them to
do so,—they pulled less steadily, and sudden strains severely
tested the primitive plough- -gear. On hard ground they did less.

Pacnorival reasons further explain the preference for oxen. aRtom
St. Luke’s Day (October 18) to April, both horses and oxen were
kept in the stalls. During these twenty-five weeks neither could
graze, and Walter of Henley calculates that the winter-keep of a
horse cost four times that of an ox. Horses needed more attend-
ance; they required to be rubbed, curried, and dressed. Oxen
were less liable to sickness than horses. The harness of the ox,
mainly home-made from materials supplied on the estate, was
cheaper to provide and repair. Shod only on the forefeet, the
shoeing of the ox cost less than that of the horse. When either
horse or ox was past work, the profit of the one lay in his hide ; of
the other, not only in his hide, but the larder : the ox was ‘‘ mannes
meat when dead, while the horse is carrion.’ Great care was
taken both of horses and of oxen. In Seneschaucie! (thirteenth
century) the duties both of the waggoner and oxherd are care-
fully defined ; each was expected to sleep every night with his
charges.
Cattle were seldom fatted even for the tables of the rich; oxen
were valued for their power of draught: cows for their milk. It
may, indeed, be said that fresh butcher’s meat was rarely eaten,
and that, if it was, it was almost universally grass-fed. No winter-
keep or feeding stuff was available; not even carrots or parsnips
were known. The commons, generally unstinted, carried as much
stock as could keep skin skin and bone ‘together i in the winter, and the
lord could not only turn out on them his own sheep and cattle,
but license strangers for money payments to do the same. Even
if the commons were stinted, the margin was too bare to mean
abundance. The best pastures were either in the lord’s own hands,
and were saved by him at the expense of the commons, or were
let out to individuals in separate occupations. Even among these
superior feeding-grounds, there were few enclosures which would
fatten a bullock. At the wane of the summer, the cattle had the

1 In Walter of Henley’s Husbandry, ed. 1900.

14 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM

aftermath of the hay meadows, and the stubble and haulm of the
arable lands. During this season they were at their best. They
only survived the winter months in a state of semi-starvation on
hay, straw, and tree-loppings. It_was, therefore, the practice at
the end of J ai to draft the aged cows, worn-out_oxen, and ‘tooth-
less sheep, or “ crones,” “prepare them as far as possible for the
butcher, slaughter them in the autumn, and either eat them fresh
or throw them into the powdering tub to be salted for winter con-
sumption. “ For Easter at Martilmas (November 11) hange up a
biefe ’’ is the advice of Tusser.

The dairy produce was a greater source of money revenue, though
the home consumption of cheese must have been very large. But
the management was necessarily controlled, like the management
of the stock, by the winter scarcity. The yield of a cow during
the twenty-four weeks from the middle of April to Michaelmas was
estimated at four-fifths of her total annual yield. Six to ten ewes
gave as much milk as one cow; but the best practice was to cease
milking ewes at Lammas Day (August 12). Cheese-making formed
an important part of the dairywoman’s duties, and the purchase
of the cloths and utensils used in its manufacture are a serious
item in estate accounts. Cheese seems generally to have been
made of skim-milk, though superior varieties were doubtless found
on the lord’s table. Most of the butter made in the summer months
was either sold, or salted and preserved in pots and barrels for
winter use! The butter-milk was either drunk, made into curds,
or more rarely used to fatten pigs. The curds were eaten with wine
or ale; the whey, under the name of “ whig,’’ made a cool and
wholesome summer drink. During the winter months, milk
fetched three times its summer price, and was generally sold. For
this, among other reasons, calves were timed to fall before autumn.
In the scarce months of winter, the price obtained for milk during
eight weeks was supposed to be worth more than the calf. Small
open-field farmers must usually have sold their calves as soon as
possible. The same practice prevailed on the demesne. The total

1 Rogers, noticing that butter was sold by the gallon, seems to have con-
cluded that it was melted (Six Centuries of Work and Wages, ed. 1890, pp.
94-5). But it would seem from the thirteenth century writings of Walter of
Henley and the anonymous author of Hosebonderie, that two pottles of butter
made 1 gallon of 7 lbs., 2 gallons made 1 stone; and 14stone 1 wey. What-
ever inference may be founded on the use of a liquid measure, it is discounted
by the use of the pottle and the stone.

Eo

SHEEP 15

number of live-stock, including horses but not including sheep, sold
from the manor of Forncett in thirteen years, between 1272 and
1306, was 152 Out of this total 99 were calves. The cows
of the demesne were under the care of a cowherd, who was required
to sleep every night with his charges in the sheds.

Sheep were the sheet anchor of farming. But it was not for
their mutton, or for their milk, or even for their skins, that they
were chiefly valued. Already the mediaeval agriculturist took his
seat on the wool-sack. As a marketable commodity, both at home
and abroad, English long wool always commanded a price. It
was less perishable than corn, and more easily transported even on
the worst of roads. To the Flemish weavers it was indispensable,
for Spanish wool could not be used alone, and the supply from
Saxony was not as yet developed. The washing and shearing of
sheep were among the labour services of the tenantry. Certain
districts, especially Shropshire, Leominster, and the Cotswolds,
were from very early times famous for the excellence of their wool.
So far as its quality depended on breed rather than on soil, some
care, as evidenced by the higher prices paid for rams, was taken
to improve the flocks. From Martinmas to Easter sheep were kept
in houses, or in moveable folds of wooden hurdles, thatched at the
sides and tops. During these months they were fed on coarse hay
or peas-haulm, mixed with wheaten or oaten straw. For the rest
of the year they browsed on the land for fallows, in woodland
pastures, or on the sheep commons. But in the autumn they were
not allowed to go on the ground, till the sun had purified the land
from the “ gelly or matty rime,’’ which was supposed to engender
scab. So also they were driven from the damp, low-lying grounds
lest they should eat the white water-snails which our ancestors,
suspected of breeding the rot. These two diseases made sheep-
farming, in spite of its profits, a risky venture. The scab does not
seem to have attacked sheep before the latter end of the thirteenth
century ; but, from that time forward, the tar-box was essential
to every shepherd. The rot is carefully treated by Walter of
Henley, if he is the real author of the passage interpolated in the
Bodleian manuscript of his work2 The writer discusses the

1 The Economic Development of a Norfolk Manor (1086-1565). By Frances
Gardiner Davenport, pp. 33-35.

2 Walter of Henley, 1890, ed. E. Lamond. The passage is given on pages
37-8, and its genuineness is disputed in the Introduction, p. xxii.

16 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM

symptoms of the disease. White veins under the eyelids, wool
that can be easily pulled away from the ribs, a skin that will not
redden when rubbed, are signs of unsoundness. Another sign is
when the November hoar-frost melts rapidly on the fleece, for the
animal is then suffering from an unnatural heat. The losses of the
flockmasters from the “ murrain,”’ to use the generic term for
diseases employed by mediaeval writers, were so severe as to create
another danger. The minute instructions against fraud given to
the official staff show that shepherds not infrequently produced
the skin, and explained the disappearance of the carcase by death
from disease. ‘‘ Let no sheep,” says the author of Seneschaucie,
‘* be flayn before it be seen and known for what fault it died.”” The
value of the flock made the shepherd one of the most important of
farm servants. He was required to be a patient man, “ not over-
hasty,’ never to be absent without leave at “fairs, markets,
wrestling-matches, wakes, or in the tavern,” and always to sleep
in the fold together with his dog. Later writers insist on the value
of lameness in the shepherd, as a lame man was unlikely to over-
drive his sheep.

Swine were the almost universal live-stock of rich and poor. As
consumers of refuse and scavengers of the village, they would, on
sanitary grounds, have repaid their keepers. But mediaeval pigs
profited their ov owners much, and cost them little. It was a Glouces-
tershire saying :

“A swine doth sooner than a cowe
Bring an ox to the plough.”
In other words, a pig was more profitable than a cow. For the
greater part of the year pigs were expected to pick up their own
living. When the wastes and woodlands of a manor were extensive,
they were, except during three months of the year, self-supporting.
They developed the qualities necessary for taking care of themselves.
The ordinary pigs of the Middle Ages were long, flat-sided, coarse-

boned, lop-eared, omnivorous animals, whose agility — was more

valuable than their early maturity. Grow th and flesh were the
work of time: so also were thickened skin, developed muscles, and
increased weight of bone. The styes were often built in the woods,
whence the pigs were only brought to feed on the arable land after
the crops were cleared, or, at times of exceptional frost, to subsist
on the leavings of the threshing-floor. During most months of the

year they ranged the woods for roots, wild pears, wild plums, crab

PIGS AND POULTRY 17

apples, sloes, haws, beech-mast, and acorns. Only when the sows
were farrowing, or when animals were being prepared for the rich
man’s table, were they specially fed. Pigs were fatted on inferior
corn, especially coarse barley, peas, beans, skim- and butter-milk,
or brewers’ grains which were readily obtainable when nearly every
household brewed its own barley beer. The amount consumed
varied with the purpose intended to be served. The boar was fatted
for the feast on ten times the grain bestowed in finishing ordinary
animals for conversion into salted pork or smoke-dried bacon.
Walter of Henley implies that some attention was given to breed,
as he recommends the use of well-bred boars. But the only quality
on which he insists is that the animal should be able to dig, or, in
other words, support itself. Modern ideas of purchasing corn for
fattening purposes, or of converting into pork or bacon farm-pro-
duce for which no ready market was available, scarcely entered
into the heads of mediaeval farmers. On the contrary, they tell us
that, if pigs were entirely dependent on the crops of the arable
land, they could not be kept at a profit, when the wages of the
swineherd, the cost of the grain consumed, and the damage done
to growing crops had been taken into account. Some trade was,
however, carried on in stores. This is proved by the records of
Forncett manor (A Norfolk Manor, 1086-1565), which show that,
in years when no pigs were kept, stores were bought and fatted for
the larder.

The poultry yard _was_ under the care of the dairywoman, who
sometimes seems to have had the poultry to farm at so much a
head. Ducks are not mentioned in any of the mediaeval treatises
on farming, though they appear in the Berkeley accounts in 1321 :
guineafowl and turkeys were unknown. But the number of geese

Ae

and fowls, and, on important estates, of peacocks and swans, was
large, and it was swollen by the produce-rents which were often
paid in poultry and eggs. The author of Hosebonderie gives minute
instructions as to the produce for which the dairywoman ought to
account. ‘‘ Hach goose ought to have five goslings a year: ”’ each
hen was to answer for 115 eggs and seven chickens, “‘ three of which
ought to be made capons, and, if there be too many hen chickens,
let them be changed for cocks while they are young, so that each
hen may answer for three capons and four hens a year. And for
five geese you must have one gander, and for five hens one cock.”

Besides the poultry yard, the dove-cote or pigeon-house was a
B

18 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM

source of profit to the lord and of loss to the tenant. Prodigious
numbers of pigeons were kept; not only were they eaten, but
their dung was prized as the most valuable of all manures. The
privilege of keeping a pigeon-house was confined to manorial lords
and jealously guarded, and every manor had its dove-cote. The
story of the French Revolution shows how bitterly the peasants
resented the plunder of their hard-earned crops by the lord’s
pigeons. Doubtless many a British peasant in mediaeval times
was stirred to the same hostility by the same nuisance.

To the produce of the crops and the live-stock of the demesne
must be added game, rabbits from the “ conygarth”’ or warren,
cider from the apples, gil from the nuts, honey and wax from the
bee-hives, and sometimes grapes from the vineyards. Bee-keeping
was an important feature of agricultural industry. The ancient
proverb says: “He that hath sheep, swine, and bees, sleep he,
wake he, he may thrive.’”’ Haney, besides being the only sugar,
was invaluable in the still-room, and in the arts of the apothecary,
physician, and “chirurgeon.” It was an ingredient in mead and
metheglyn. It was used in embalming, in medicines, and in such
decoctions as mulse water, oenomel, honey water, rodomel, or
quintessence. Wax was not only necessary for the candles of the
wealthy, but, like honey, was largely used in mediaeval medicine.
Mixed with violets, it was a salve: it was also one of the ingredients
of “ playsters, oyntementes, suppositories, and such like.” In
some districts of England, vineyards formed part of the equipment
of manors ; one was made by Lord Berkeley towards the close of
the reign of Edward III., and his biographer suggests that he
learned the “ husbandry . . . whilst hee was prisoner in ffrance or
a Traveller in Spaine.”’ pnb were without vine-
yards, which are mentioned thirty-eight times in Domesday Book.
It is not necessary to explain the disappearance of the vine by a —
change of climate. Wine was then often sweetened with honey
and flavoured with blackberries and spices. Unless it came from
abroad, it was rarely drunk in its pure state. It would, therefore,
be unsafe to found any theory of climatic change upon the pro-
duction of a liquid which, in its natural state, may frequently have
resembled vinegar.

Besides the produce of the live-stock and crops of his demesne,
the lord of the manor had other sources of revenue. There were
the fixed money or produce rents for their land paid by free tenants

MANORIAL COURTS 19

and_bondmen, and the money payments which were sometimes
accepted in lieu of labour services. Sales of timber and underwood,
of turf, of herbage, licences to fold on the tenant’s land, or licences
to turn pigs into the lord’s woods for beechmast or acorns, brought
in varying sums of money. The mill at which the tenants ground
their corn was his property. Whether the miller was his servant,
or farmed the receipts, a considerable proportion of the tolls went
into the landlord’s purse, though the cost of repairs and upkeep
diminished the net profits. On some manors the oven in which
the bread was baked was also the property of the lord of the manor.
The fees and fines levied and settled by the manorial courts in the
course of a year were surprisingly large ; besides their administra-
tive work, they were at once the guardians and the interpreters of
the customs of the manor. The range of business administered
in these courts, to which the tenants, both free and bond, were
summoned as jurors, therefore embraced the domestic and financial
affairs of the manor. Here were paid the fees for permission to
reside outside the manor, to send children to school, to enter minor
orders, to apprentice a son to a trade, or to marry adaughter. Here
too were imposed the fines for slovenly work at harvest, for selling
cattle without the lord’s leave, for appropriating commons and
wastes, for moving a neighbour’s landmark, for neglecting to repair
a cottage, for failing to discharge labour dues. Here too were
fixed the contributions of the tenantry in money or labour towards
- the maintenance of the by-roads within the manor, and the fines
for neglect of the duty to keep their surfaces in repair, to provide
for their proper drainage, and to remove obstructions. Here also
crime was punished ; offenders against life or property, as well as
poachers, were mulcted ; wrangling scolds and tavern-hunters were
presented ; idlers were deprived of their holdings, and, as a last
resort, expelled from the manor. Here too were fixed and levied
the necessary contributions for the repair of the stocks, the pillory,
the ducking-stool, and the pound. Here the miller would be fined
for mixing rubbish with his flour, the baker for selling short weight,
the brewer who adulterated his beer, the ale-wife and tavern-keeper
who used false measures or mixed the drink they sold with peony
seed, salt or garlick, the carrier for failing to deliver goods, the
householder who harboured a stranger without a licence. Here
also were received and entered the fees of tenants for admission to
their holdings, and the payment of fines by sons who succeeded

i

‘al

Vay iv

20 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM

their fathers. Here, finally, on the sworn evidence of a body of
jurors chosen from the tenants, were drawn up the surveys of the
manor which recorded the exact condition of the estate—the total
acreage of the demesne, and of each of the arable fields, of the
meadows, the several pastures and the pasturage, and their annual
values ; the state of the woods and the coppices, how much could
be cut, and what they were worth yearly; the acreage of the
commons and the stock which they would carry ; the number of
the live-stock of various kinds; the holdings of the free tenants,
and their rents or services; the holdings of the villeins, bordars,
and cottagers, their services and money equivalents; the profits
of fisheries, mills, and incidental manorial rights; the number of
tenants who had finally commuted their services for fixed payments
in cash, of those who, at the discretion of the lord, either rendered
labour services or paid the money values, and of those who still
{ discharged their personal obligations by actual work.

The remainder of the cultivated land of the manor was occupied
by tenants who paid rents in the form of military or labour
services, or money, or produce. Their farm practices, crops,
and live-stock were the same as those of the demesne, though their
difficulties in combating winter scarcity were greater. Free tenants,
whose tenure was military service, or who had commuted the per-
sonal obligations for quit-rents, may sometimes have held land,
like modern farmers, in their exclusive occupation for individual
cultivation. But the area of free land was comparatively small,
and, as often as not, it was thrown into the village farm, occupied
and cultivated in common by an agrarian association of co-partners,
free and unfree.

The varieties of tenure were great. So also were the varieties
of social condition, and of the obligations by which the grades of
those social conditions were governed. The distinctions between
freemen and bondinen and between freehold and bond tenure had
been, in the eye of the law, broad and deep. But custom had
gradually intervened, and, with endless variety of practice, miti-
gated the severity of legal theory. At law the bondman’s position
was subject to the lord’s caprice. Unlike the freeman, he was tied
to the manor; he could not leave it without licence from the .e lord,
and payment. of a fine. _ His services were 1 uncertain ‘in amount,
and could be increased at the lord’s pleasure. He “paid a fine to
marry his daughter, to send his son to school, to make him a priest

RANKS IN RURAL SOCIETY 21

or an apprentice. His lands and his goods and chattels might be
seized by his lord, and when he died, his holding was given to
whom the lord willed: his heir bought a licence to inherit even his
moveables, and paid a fine when he was admitted to his father’s
tenancy. In the thirteenth century, some at least of these condi-
tions had been modified. The bondman’s services had become
fixed ; he could buy and sell, hold property, and dispose of his
possessions by will. In theory he might still be at the mercy of
the lord’s will: but custom had so regulated the exercise of that
will that it could no longer be capricious.

Speaking broadly,1 the_mass of the occupiers of land were, in

the eye of the law, unfree—bondmen who rented the shares in the
land which they cultivated for themselves by labour services on

the lord’s demesne. It was the amount and certainty of their

services which determined the rank of the unfree. Sometimes the
service was for the autumn only, or for autumn and spring work,
whether on specified days or at particular periods ; sometimes of
team work, sometimes of manual labour, sometimes of both ; some-
times of week-work throughout the year, and either of one, two, or
three days in each week. All their spare time was spent on their
own holdings. Of this semi-servile class the villeins formed the
aristocracy. The villein was neither a servant in husbandry nor
a labourer for wages. He occupied land, and, like Chaucer’s

Ss eee

discharge of his share of the joint liability, he could contribute to

the manorial plough-team? A “hide” of land, which Professor

1 Students of Professor Maitland’s invaluable works will recognise the danger
of broad and general statements, to all of which there are exceptions and
modifications.

* The hide, or ‘“‘carucate’”’ of Domesday Book, or “‘ploughland,” which aver-
ages 120 acres, is sometimes said to have been as much land as a team of 8 oxen.
could plough in a year of 44 weeks of working days. But Walter of Henley,
who is the authority for this statement, only tries to show that the area should
be 160, or even 180, acres ; he does not say that it actually was of this larger
size. It does not seem likely that a fiscal unit varied with the nature of the
soil, the weight of the plough, the condition of the team, the configuration
of the land, and the temperament of the ploughman. It seems more probable
that the hide or carucate was the definite area of 120 acres. Therefore a
quarter of a carucate (30 acres) was the Domesday “ virgate,’’ which, under
the name of “broad ox-gang,”’ “‘ husband-land,” ‘“‘farm-hold”’ or “farm”
in the North, “‘ yardland ” in the Midlands, “‘ full land ”’ in Cambridgeshire,

and “living” or “whole place”’ in Dorsetshire, formed the typical arable

{Aa de A

le Us

22 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM

Maitland considers to have been “‘ the land of a household,” was
treated _as the area which a team of eight oxen could plough in a
working year. Its extent may have varied. But, if the size was
120 acres, then each hide consisted of four portions of 30 acres,
called “ virgates,’’ or 8 portions of 15 acres, called “ bovates.”
Thus the eighth part of the hide, or “ bovate,’” was the land of one
ox; the fourth part of the hide, or “ virgate,” was the land of
two oxen; and the whole hide was the land of the complete team
of eight oxen. It was on this basis that the tenemental land, in
theory, and sometimes in practice, was divided. The_ typical
holding of the villein was regulated by his capacity to furnish one
or Exo oxen to the team. In other words, it was the ‘ virgate ”
‘* yardland ”’ of 30 acres, though one-ox holdings « or “‘ bovates ”
of 15 acres, and even half-ox holdings, were frequent.
Villems of the higher grade were generally distinguished from
inferior orders of the semi-servile classes of the peasantry by the
\size of their holdings in the village farm, by the certainty of their
agricultural services on the demesne, and by the obligation to « to do
team-work rather than manual labour. The smaller the holding,
the vaguer the labour obligations, the more manual the work,—
the lower was the grade of the villein. Besides the villeins there
were other orders of bondmen—such as the rural handicraftsmen
who were specially provided with land, and the bordars and cottars,
who rented particular cottages and garden ground, which often
carried with them from two to five acres of arable land, together
with common rights. The two latter classes, besides their obligatory
manual services, probably eked out their subsistence either as hired
labourers on the demesne or by supplying the labour for which
their wealthier neighbours were responsible. At the bottom of the

social ladder were the serfs, to whom strict law assigned no rights,

though there were many varieties in their grades and position.

Their chief badge of serfdom was the indeterminate character of

their services—the obligation to labour in the manner, at the
time, and for the wage, if any, which the lord directed. But

holding of the common-field farmer. It was in fact as much as two oxen
could plough in the working year. There were, however, also “ one-ox men,”
whose holdings of 15 acres were an eighth of a carucate, and were called in
Domesday Book ‘“ bovates,” and at later stages “‘narrow oxgangs,” or
“half places.” Smaller holdings consisting of half bovates, like the “ farthing
holds’ of Dorsetshire, ‘‘fardels’’ of Somersetshire, or ‘‘ farrundells”’ of
Gloucestershire, were by no means uncommon, and in practice there was no
fixed area for the arable holdings of open-field farmers.

THE OPEN ARABLE FIELDS 23

the serf might occupy land, own cattle, and labour for himself.
Thus, out of these various classes, free and unfree, sprang small
landowners, tenant farmers, copyholders} and wage-earning
labourers.

Round the village, or ‘‘ town,” in which were gathered the home-

ee
steads of the inhabitants, lay the open arable fields, which were

grown the crops which Shakespeare enumerates. These were the

lands ‘‘ of Ceres’:
‘“* thy rich leas

‘* Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and peas.” ?
Here, at harvest time, the yellow of the corn crops alternated with
the dark and light greens of beans or peas and the brown of the
bare fallows. This cultivated_area, which included the driest and
soundest of the land, was hedgeless, open, and unenclosed, diyided
by_turf-grown balks into fields—two, three, or, rarely, four in_

number. If the former, one field lay fallow, while the other was
under—tilace—forcorn, or beans, or peas, This dual system still
prevailed near Gloucester in the nineteenth century, and existed
at Stogursey in Somersetshire in 1879. But from the Norman
Conquest onward the three-field system was the most_ prevalent.
Down to the middle of the reign of George III. the arable land
received the unvarying triennial succession of wheat or rye, of
spring crops such as barley, oats, beans, or peas, and of fallow.

1The term “copyholder”’ belongs to a later date. In the thirteenth
century, practically all land held in villeinage, or in bondage, was held
“according to the custom of the manor ”’ (secundum consuetudinem manerit).
The title was the sworn testimony of those who knew the custom. Land
was said to be held not only “‘ according to the custom of the manor,” but
“at the will of the lord ” (ad voluntatem domini). By the thirteenth century,
however, the will of the lord was no longer arbitrary, but could only be exer-
cised according to manorial custom.

Towards the end of the fourteenth century, another expression was added.
Tenants were said to hold land “‘ according to the custom of the manor by
a copy of the entry on the court roll” (per copiam rotuli curie). Probably
it had been found that, owing to the increased mobility of the rural popula-
tion, oral testimony was not always available. Hence it became the practice
to enter the incidents of the tenure of customary land on the rolls of the
manorial court, and tenants were called copyholders, because the copy of the
entry was the evidence of their title. The words “ at the will of the lord ”
were still retained, and it has been suggested (The End of Villainage in England,
by T. W. Page, American Economic Association, May, 1900, pp. 84-5) that
the use of the words indicated an increased power on the part of the lord to
abolish or alter the custom.

2 Tempest, Act iv. Se. i. 60-1.

vf

24 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM

During these seven centuries a more scientific rotation was in some
districts adopted. Thus at Aston Boges, in Oxfordshire, a fourth
course was interposed. But, speaking generally, open-field hus-
bandry rather retrograded than advanced, as the discipline of
manorial officials relaxed.

Each of the three arable fields was subdivided into a number
of shots, furlongs, or flats, separated from one another by unploughed
bush-grown turf balks, varying in width from two to sixteen feet
These flats were in turn cut up into parallel acre, half-acre, or
quarter-acre, strips coinciding with the arrangement of a ploughed
field into ridges and furrows. If the strips were acre strips, they
were a furlong in length (220 yards) and 4 rods (22 yards) in breadth.
Ploughmen still measure the acre in the same way as the open-
field strip. Theoretically each flat was square, with sides of 40
poles, containing 10 acres ; in practice every variety of shape and
admeasurement was found. But, though the pole from which the
acre was raised varied from the 13} feet of Hampshire to the 24
feet of Cheshire, two sides of the flats always ran parallel. Thus
each of the three arable fields resembled several sheets of paper,
cut into various shapes, stitched together like patch-work, and
ruled with margins and lines. The separate sheets are the flats ;
the margins are the headlands running down the flats at right angles
to, and across the ends of, the parallel strips which are represented
by the spaces between the lines. The lines themselves are the
“balks ”’ of unploughed turf, by which the strips were divided
from each other. The strips appear under different names. For
instance, in Scotland and Northumberland they were called “ rigs ”’ ;
in Lincolnshire “selions’”?; in Nottinghamshire “lands”; in
Dorsetshire “‘lawns’’; in North Wales “loons”; in Westmor-
land “‘ dales,’’ and their occupiers “‘ dalesmen ”’ ; in Cambridgeshire
‘balks’; in Somersetshire “raps’”’; in Sussex “ pauls”; else-
where in southern counties “ stitches.” When the strips were
stunted by encountering some obstacle, such as a road or river,
they were called “‘ butts.”’2 Stray odd corners which did not fit
in with the parallel arrangement of the flats were “ crustz,”’*? that

‘ 99 66

1 The balks appear under a variety of names, such as “ raines, reins,”
“‘ walls,’ ‘‘ meres,’’ ‘‘ lynches,’’ ‘‘ lantchetts,’’ ‘‘ landshares,’’ ‘‘ launchers,”
or “ edges.”’

2 As in Newington Butts.

® Registry of Worcester Priory (Camden Society), 1865, p. 18a.

SCATTERED STRIPS IN OPEN-FIELDS 25

is, pieces broken off, “ pightels,’ ‘‘ gores,’! “‘fothers,’? and
“* pykes,”’ because, as Fitzherbert explains, they were “‘ often brode
in the one ende and a sharpe pyke in the other ende.”’

The arable fields were fenced against the live-stock from seed-
time.to harvest, and the intermixed strips were cultivated for the
separate use of individuals, subject fo the compulsory rotation by
which ee each of the “three fields was cro ropped. On Lammas Day
separate arate user ended, and common mon. rights recommenced ; hence
fields occupied in this manner were, and are, called pavetins Lands

r “half-year lands.” After harvest the hayward removed the
fences, and the live-stock of the community wandered over the
fields before the common herdsman, shepherd, or swineherd. The
herdsman, in the reign of Henry VIII., received 8d. a year for
every head of cattle entrusted to his care, and the swineherd 4d.
for every head of swine. When sheep were folded on the cultivated
land, each farmer provided, during the winter months, his own
fold and fodder for his flock. Richard Hooker, while he held the
country living of Drayton Beauchamp in Buckinghamshire, was
found by two of his former pupils, ‘‘ like humble and innocent Abel,
tending his small allotment of sheep in a common field.” That
no occupier might find all his land fallow in the same year, every
one had strips in each of the three arable fields. If the holding
of the open-field farmer consisted of thirty acres, there would thus
be ten acres in each field. In other words, he would have ten
acres under wheat and rye, ten acres under spring crops, and ten
acres fallow. The same care was taken to make the divisions equal
in agricultural value, so that each man might have his fair pro-
portion of the best and worst land. To divide equally the good

and bad, well and ill situated soil, the bundle of strips allotted in

each of the three fields did not lie together, but_was intermixed —

and scattered, _

In the lowest part of the land—if possible along a stream—lay
the “ings,” “ carrs,’’ “‘ leazes,” or meadows, annually cut up into
lots or doles, and put up for hay. These doles were fenced off to
be mown for the separate use of individuals either from Candlemas
(February 2), or, more usually, from St. Gregory’s Day (March 12)

1 As in Kensington Gore.
2 Cf. Chaucer (Prologue, 530):
“A ploughman was his brother,
That hadde y-lad of dong ful many a fother,”’

where the word is generally taken to mean a load.

oh

26 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM

to Midsummer Day; from July to February, or later, they were
open, common pasturage. Sometimes the plots, which varied in
size from a half-acre downwards, went with the arable holdings, so
that the same man annually received the same portion of meadow.
Sometimes the plots were balloted for every year. Each lot was
distinguished by a name, such as the cross, crane’s foot, or peel, 7.e.
baker’s shovel, which will often explain puzzling field-names.
Corresponding marks were thrown into a hat or bag and drawn by
a boy. This balloting continued up to the last century in Somerset-
shire, and still continues at Yarnton in Oxfordshire After the
hay had been cut and carried, the meadows reverted to common
occupation, and were grazed indiscriminately by the live-stock of
the village, till they were again fenced off, allotted, and put up
for hay.

Qn the outskirts of the arable fields nearest to: the village lay
one or more “hams”’ or stinted_ pastures, in which a regulated
number of live- -stock might graze, and therefore supplying superior
feed. Brandersham, Smithsham, Wontnersham, Herdsham, Con-
stable’s Field, Dog Whipper’s Land, Barber’s Furlong, Tinker’s
Field, Sexton’s Mead, suggest that sometimes special allotments

ee

were made to those who practised trades_of such general utility

el ee

as the stock-brander, the blacksmith, the mole-catcher, the cow-
herd, the constable, the barber, the tinker, and the sexton. The
dog-whipper’s usefulness is less obvious; but possibly he was
employed to prevent the live-stock from being harried by dogs.
Even the spiritual wants of the village were sometimes supplied in
the same way. Parson’s Close and Parson’s Acre are not uncommon.
It is significant that no schoolmasters seem to have been provided
for by allotments of land.

Besides the e open arable fields, the meadows, — and fhe stinted

wastes which were left in their native e wildness. These wastes p pro-
vided fern and hea ther for litter, bedding, or thatching; small
wood for hurdles; tree-loppings for winter browse of live-stock ;
fuzre and turves for fuel; larger timber for fencing, implements,
and building ; mast, acorns, and other food for the swine. Most
of these smaller rights were made the subject of fixed-annual pay-
ments to_ “the manorial lord ; but. ‘the. right_of cutting fuel was

generally ; attached to the occupation, not only of-arabletland, but

1 As described by R. H. Gretton in The Economic Journal for March, 1912.

THE COMMON-PASTURES 27

of cottages. The most important part of these lands were the
common pastures, which were often the only grass that arable
farmers could command for their _live-stock._They__therefore
formed_an integral gral and essential part of the village farm. No
rights were exercised upon them by the general public. On the
contrary, the commons were most jealously guarded by the privileged
commoners against the intrusion or encroachments of strangers.
The agistment of strange cattle or sheep was strictly prohibited :
commoners who turned out more stock than their proper share
were ‘‘presented”’ at the manorial courts and fined; cottages
erected on the commons were condemned to be pulled down; the
area within which swine might feed was carefully limited, and the
swine were to be ringed.t’ Those who enjoyed the grazing rights
were the occupiers of arable land, whose powers of turning out
stock were, in theory, proportioned to the size of their arable
holdings, and the occupiers of certain cottages, which commanded
higher rents in consequence of the privilege. It was on these
commons that the cattle and sheep of the village were fed. Every
morning the cattle were collected, probably by the sound of a horn,
and driven to the commons by the village herdsman along drift
ways, which were enclosed on either side by moveable or permanent
fences to keep the animals from straying on to the arable land. In
the evening they were driven back, each animal returning to its
own shelter, as the herd passed up the village street. Similarly,
the sheep were driven by the village shepherd to the commons by
day, and folded at night on the wheat fallows. Sheep were the
manure carriers, and were prized as much for their folding quality
as for their fleeces. In some districts they were kept almost
entirely for their agricultural value to the arable land. Until the
winter they were penned in the common fold on the fallows or the
stubbles. After the fallows had been ploughed, and before the
crops on the other fields were cleared, they had only the commons.
During winter each commoner was obliged to find hay for his
sheep and his own fold, the common shepherd penning and folding
them so as gradually to cover the whole area.

The open-field system, thus briefly sketched with its arable,
meadow, and permanent pasture land, prevailed at some time or

The Regulations for “‘Common Rights at Cottenham and Stretham”’
are printed by Dr. Cunningham in the Camden Miscellany, vol. xii. (1910),
pp. 173-296.

28 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM

other throughout England, except perhaps in the south-west. The
following description of the crofters’ holdings in Skye in 1750
might have been written, with but few alterations, of half the cul-
tivated area of England in the eighteenth century: “A certain
number of tacksmen formed a copartnery and held a tract of land,
or township, for which they paid tribute to the chief, and each
member was jointly and severally responsible. The grazing was
in common. All the arable land was divided into ridges, assigned
annually by lot among the partners. Each might have a dozen
or more of these small ridges, and no two contiguous except by
accident ; the object being to give each partner a portion of the
better and inferior land. The copartner appears to have had
cotters under him, for whose work he paid.” The prevalence of
the system may still be traced with more or less distinctness in
rural England. The counties in which it was most firmly established
are counties of villages, not of scattered farmsteads and hamlets.
Turf balks and lynches record the time when “ every rood of ground
maintained its man.” Irregular and regular fences, narrow lanes
and wide highways, crooked and straight roads, respectively sug-
gest the piecemeal or the wholesale enclosure of common fields.
The waving ridges on thousands of acres of ancient pasture still
represent the swerve of the cumbrous village plough with its team
of eight oxen. The age of the hedgerow timber sometimes tells
the date of the change. The pages appropriated to hedges by
agricultural writers of the eighteenth century indicate the era of the
abolition of open fields, and the minuteness of their instructions
proves that the art of making hedges was still in its infancy. The
scattered lands of ordinary farms, compared with the compact
‘** court,” ‘‘ hall,’ or ‘‘ manor ”’ farm, recall the fact that the lord’s
demesne was once the only permanent enclosure. The crowding
together of the rural population in villages betrays the agrarian
partnership, as detached farmsteads and isolated labourers’ dwellings
indicate the system by which it has been supplanted.

Accurate comparison between the conditions of the rural popula-
tion in the thirteenth and twentieth centuries seems impossible.
Calculations based on the prices of commodities, involving, as they
must, the translation of the purchasing power of mediaeval money
into its modern equivalent, are necessarily guess-work. They are
also to a great extent irrelevant, for few of the necessaries of life
were ever bought by the cultivators of the soil, and whether the

THE SELF-SUPPORTING VILLAGES 29

corn that they raised was fetching 3s. or 6s. the quarter in a distant
market made little difference to the inhabitants of villages. They
grew it for their own consumption. Owing to difficulties of com-
munication, every village raised its own bread-supply. Hence a
great extent of land, which from a farming point of view formed an
excessive proportion of the total area, was tilled for corn, however
unsuited it might be for arable cultivation. As facilities of transport
increased, this necessity became less and less paramount. Land
best adapted to pasture no longer required to be ploughed, but
might be put to the use for which it was naturally fitted. Improve-
ments in means of communication were thus among the changes
which helped to extinguish village farms. But for the time, and
so long_as the open-field system prevailed, farming continued to be

in the main a self-sv sufficing industry. Except for the payment of
rent, ‘Tittle coin was needed or used in rural districts. _ Parishes
till the middle of the eighteenth century remained what they were
in the thirteenth century—isolated and _ self-supporting. The
inhabitants had little need of communication even with their
neighbours, still less with the outside world. The fields and the
live-stock provided their necessary food and clothing. Whatever
wood was required for building, fencing, and fuel was supplied from
the wastes. Each village had its mill, and nearly every house had
its oven and brewing kettle. Women spun and wove wool into
coarse cloth, and hemp or nettles into linen ; men tanned their own
leather. The rough tools required for cultivation of the soil, and
the rude household utensils needed for the comforts of daily life,
were made at home. In the long winter evenings, farmers, their
sons, and their servants carved the wooden spoons, the platters,
and the beechen bowls. They fitted and riveted the bottoms to
the horn mugs, or closed, in coarse fashion, the leaks in the leathern
jugs. They plaited the osiers and reeds into baskets and into
“weeles”’ for catching fish; they fixed handles to the scythes,
rakes, and other tools; cut the flails from holly or thorn, and
fastened them with thongs to the staves; shaped the teeth for
rakes and harrows from ash or willow, and hardened them in the
fire ; cut out the wooden shovels for casting the corn in the granary ;
fashioned ox-yokes and bows, forks, racks, and rack-staves ;
twisted willows into scythe-cradles, or into traces and other harness
gear. ‘Travelling carpenters, smiths, and tinkers visited detached
farmhouses and smaller villages, at rare intervals, to perform

30 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM

those parts of the work which needed their professional skill. But
every village of any size found employment for such trades as those
of the smith and the carpenter, and the frequency with which
“Smiths Ham” appears among field names suggests the value
which the inhabitants attached to the forge and the anvil. Mean-
while the women plaited straw or reeds for neck-collars, stitched
and stuffed sheepskin bags for cart-saddles, peeled rushes for
wicks and made candles. Thread was often made from nettles.
Spinning-wheels, distaffs, and needles were never idle. Home-
made cloth and linen supplied all wants. Flaxen linen for board-
cloths, sheets, shirts or smocks, and towels, as the napkins were
called, on which, before the introduction of forks, the hands were
wiped, was only found in wealthy houses and on special occasions.
Hemp, in ordinary households, supplied the same necessary articles,
and others, such as candle-wicks, in coarser form. Shoe-
thread, halters, stirrup-thongs, girths, bridles, and ropes were
woven from the “‘ carle’’ hemp ; the finer kind, or “‘ fimble ” hemp,
supplied the coarse linen for domestic use, and “‘ hempen home-
spun + passed into a proverb for a countryman. Nettles were
also extensively used in the manufacture of linen ; sheets and table-
cloths made from nettles were to be found in many homes at the
end of the eighteenth century. The formation of words like spin-
ster, webster, lyster, shepster, maltster, brewster, and baxter
indicated that the occupations were feminine, and show that
women spun, wove, dyed, and cut out the cloth, as well as malted
the barley, brewed the ale, and baked the bread for the family.

1 Midsummer-Night’s Dream, Act iii. Se. 1.

FEUDAL BARONS AT CORN-MARKETS 31

CHAPTER II.

THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR. 1300-1485.

Great landlords as farmers: horrors of winter scarcity: gradual decay of
the manorial system and the increased struggle for life: aspects of the
change : common rights over cultivated and uncultivated land: tendency
towards separate occupation: substitution of labour-rents for money-
rents; the Black Death; Labour legislation, and its effect; Manor of Castle
Combe and Berkeley Estates; new relations of landlords and tenants
substituted for old relations of feudal lords and dependents; tenant-
farmers and free labourers ; leases and larger farms ; increase of separate
occupations : William Paston and Hugh Latimer ; wage-earning labourers ;
voluntary surrender of holdings; freedom of movement and of contract.

CHANGES in farming practices are always slow; without ocular
demonstration of their superiority, and without experience of
increased profits, new methods are rarely adopted. In the Middle
Ages agriculture was a self-supporting industry rather than a
profit-making business. The immediate neighbourhood of large
towns created markets for the surplus produce that remained after
satisfying the needs of the cultivators of the soil. But remoter
villages contained neither buyers of produce nor pioneers of improve-
ments. Edward I. was a gardener, and Edward II. a farmer,
horse-breeder, and thatcher. These royal tastes may have set the
fashion. “Here and there great lay landowners, as well as great
ecclesiastics, actively interested themselves in farming progress.
Thomas, first Lord Berkeley, who held the family estates from 1281
to 1321, encouraged his tenants to improve their land by marling,
or by taking earth from the green highways of the manors. Another
famous farmer was his grandson, the third Lord (1326-61). Feudal
barons are rarely represented as fumbling in the recesses of their
armour for samples of corn. But “few or noe great faires or
marketts were in those parts, whereat this lord was not himself, as
at Wells, Gloucester, Winchcomb, Tetbury, and others; where also
hee new bought or changed the severall grains that sowed his

32 THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR

arrable lands.” !_ These mediaeval prototypes of ‘“‘ Farmer George,”’
of “ Turnip ” Townshend, or of Coke of Norfolk were rare. Few
of the baronial aristocracy verified the truth of the maxim that
“the master’s foot fats the soil.”” The strenuous idleness or the
military ardour of youthful lords was generally absorbed in field
sports and martial exercises—in tilting at the ring, in hawking,
hunting the buck, or lying out for nights together to net the fox.
Grown to man’s estate, they congregated for a month at a time at
“ tylts, turnaments, or other hastiludes,”’ or exchanged the mimicry
of war for its realities in France, or on the borders of Scotland and
Wales. Most of the lay barons rebelled against the minute and
continuous labour of farming, and this contempt for bucolic life
may be illustrated from heraldry. Its emblems are drawn from
sport, war, mythology, or religion. Products and implements of
husbandry are despised, unless, like the ‘“‘ garb” or sheaf of the
Washbournes, the scythe of the Sneyds, or the hay-wains of the
Hays, they had been ennobled by martial use.

Few landowners, except the wealthiest, had as yet built per-
manent residences on their distant estates. Content with temporary
accommodation, they travelled with their households and retinues
from manor to manor, and from farmhouse to farmhouse, in order
to consume on the spot the produce of their fields and live-stock.
It was the practice of the first Lord Berkeley to go “‘ in progress
from one of his Manor and farmehouses to an other scarce two miles
a sunder, making his stay at each of them . . . and soe backe to
his standinge houses where his wife and family remayned .. .
sometymes at Berkeley Castle, at Wotton, at Bradley, at Awre,
at Portbury, And usually in Lent at Wike by Arlingham, for his
better and neerer provision of Fish.” His example was followed
by his successors. But in the frequent absences of manorial lords
on military service at home or abroad, their wives played important
parts in rural life. Joan, wife of the first Lord Berkeley, ‘“‘ at no
tyme of her 42 yeares mariage ever travelled ten miles from the
mansion houses of her husband in the Countyes of Gloucester and
Somersett, much Jesse humered herselfe with the vaine delights of
_ London and other Cities.” She spent much of her time in super-
| vising her “ dairy affairs,’ passing from farmhouse to farmhouse,
taking account of the smallest details. The family tradition

1 The Lives of the Berkeleys, by John Smyth of Nibley, ed. Maclean (1883),
vol. i. p. 300.

THE MONKS AS FARMERS 33

lingered long. The same housewifely courses were followed by the
widowed Lady Berkeley, who administered the estates during her
son’s minority in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., and
died in 1564. At all her country houses she “ would betimes in
Winter and Somer mornings make her walkes to visit her stable,
barnes, dayhouse, pultry, swinetroughs, and the like.” Her
daughter-in-law’s tastes were different. She was a sportswoman,
delighting in buck-hunting, skilled with the cross-bow, an expert
archer, devoted to hawking, commonly keeping “a cast or two of
merlins, which sometimes she mewed in her own chamber, which
falconry cost her husband each yeare one or two gownes and kirtles
spoiled by their mutings.” Well might the elder lady “ sweare, by
God’s blessed sacrament, this gay girle will begger my son Henry!”

Great ecclesiastics made their progresses from manor to manor
like the lay barons, and for the same reason. But in many instances
monks were resident landowners, and by them were initiated most
of the improvements which were made in the practices of mediaeval
farming. They studied agriculture in the light of the writings of
Cato, Varro, and Columella: the quaintly rhymed English version
of Palladius was probably the work of an inmate of a religious house
at Colchester ; the Rules for the management of a landed estate
are reputed to be the work of one of the greatest of thirteenth
century churchmen, Robert Grosteste, Bishop of Lincoln ; Walter
of Henley is said to have been a Dominican, and manuscripts of his
work, either in the original Norman French or translated into English
or Latin, found a place in many monastic libraries. Throughout the
Middle Ages, both in England and France, it was mainly the influence
of the monks which built roads and bridges, improved live-stock,
drained marshes, cleared forests, reclaimed wastes, and brought
barren land into cultivation.

Large improvements in the mediaeval methods of arable farming
were impossible until farmers commanded the increased resources
of more modern times. There was little to mitigate, either for
men or beasts, the horrors of winter scarcity. Nothing is more
characteristic of the infancy of farming than the violence of its .
alternations. On land which was inadequately manured, and
on which neither field-turnips nor clovers were known till centuries
later, there could be no middle course between the exhaustion of
continuous cropping and the rest-cure of barrenness. The fallow
was un véritable Dimanche accordé a la terre. As with the land, so

Cc

34 THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR

with its products. Famine trod hard on the heels of feasting. It
was not only that prices rose and fell with extraordinary rapidity ;
but both for men and beasts the absolute scarcity of winter always
succeeded the relative plenty of autumn. Except in monastic
granges no great quantities of grain were stored, and mediaeval
legislators eyed corn-dealers with the same hostility with which
modern engineers of wheat corners are regarded by their victims.
The husbandman’s golden rule must have been often forgotten—
that at Candlemas half the fodder and all the corn must be
untouched. Even the most prudent housekeepers found it difficult
always to remember the proverbial wisdom of eating within the
tether, or sparing at the brink instead of the bottom. Many, like
Panurge, eat their corn in the blade. Equally violent were the
alternations in the employment afforded by mediaeval farming.
Weeks of feverish activity passed suddenly into months of com-
parative indolence. Winter was in fact a season to be dreaded
alike by the husbandman and his cattle, and it is not without good
cause that the joyousness of spring is the key-note of early English
poetry.

Under the conditions which prevailed in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, little advance in farming practices could be
expected. During the greater part of the period, therefore, the
history of agriculture centres round those economic, social, and
political changes which shaped its future progress. Under the
pressure of these influences the structure of feudal society was
undermined. The social mould, in which the mediaeval world had ~
been cast, crumbled to powder under a series of transformations, |
which, though they worked without combination or regularity,
proved to be, from the latter half of the fourteenth century onwards,
collectively and uniformly irresistible. From within, as well as ~
from without, the manor as an organisation for regulating rural ©
labour and administering local affairs was breaking up. As money —
grew more plentiful, it became more and more universally the basis _
on which services were regulated. Commerce, as it expanded,
created new markets for the sale of the produce of the soil. Parlia-
ment assumed new duties; the Royal Courts of Justice extended
their jurisdiction ; and, as a consequence, manorial courts lost some
of their importance in matters of local self-government. Land was
beginning to be regarded as a source of income, not of military!
power. As landowning became a business and farming a trade,

THE NEW STRUGGLE FOR LIFE 35

agricultural progress demanded less personal dependence, a freer
hand, a larger scope for individual enterprise. The foundations of ¥
feudalism were thus shaken, though the Hundred Years’ War main-
tained its superstructure intact. It is this contrast between reality
and appearance which gives an air of hollowness and artificiality to
the splendour of the reign of Edward ITI.

The break-up of the manorial system accompanied the transition
from an age of graduated mutual dependence towards an age of
greater individual independence. It meant the removal of restric-
tions to personal freedom, the encouragement of individual enter-
prise, the establishment of the principle of competition in determining
both money rents and money wages. From another point of view
the results were not entirely advantageous. Against the older
system it might be urged that it created a lack of opportunity which
caused local stagnation. In its favour might be pleaded that it
maintained a certain level of equality among the households in
village communities, presided over by the lord of the manor. Now,
however, the struggle for life becomes intensified ; the strong go to
the front, the weak to the wall; for one man who rises in the social
scale, five sink. Here, one prospers, laying field to field, adding
herd to herd and flock to flock. Here, others sell their live-stock,
yield their strips of land to their more enterprising neighbour, and
become dependent upon him for employment and wages. From
the fourteenth century onwards the agricultural problem of holding
the balance even between the economic gain and social loss of
agricultural progress has puzzled the wisest of legislators.

The manorial organisation of labour suffered no sudden or uni-
versal collapse, due to any improvements in the methods or altera-
tion in the aims of farming. It rather underwent a gradual and
local decay which originated in economic, social, and political causes,
and proceeded most rapidly in the neighbourhood of trading centres
or sea-ports. It would be inaccurate to attempt to divide this
process into successive stages, because they always overlapped,
were generally simultaneous, and were often almost complete on
one manor before they had begun on another. But from one point
of view, the movement increased the number of holdings which were
separately occupied ; in another aspect, it exchanged labour ser-
vices for their cash values, and altered the relations between feudal
lords and their retainers into those of employer and employed, and
of the letter and the hirer of land ; in another, it applied principles

36 THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR

of competition to money rents and money wages; in another, it
encouraged enterprising tenants to recognise that the best results
of farming could only be obtained on compact holdings, large enough
for the employment of money as well as of labour.

The tendency towards the separate occupation and individual
management of land had already begun, though it was most marked
on the new land which was brought into cultivation. On the ancient
arable land it was checked by the rights of common which were
enjoyed, not only over the waste, but over the open arable fields.
In their origin these rights were arable and attached only to arable
land. Each occupier of an arable holding was entitled to graze on
the common pastures the horses and oxen required for his tillage
operations, and to feed the sheep needed for manuring his cultivated
land. Without this right the associated partners in the common
venture of farming would have had no means of supporting their
beasts after the crops were sown. Common rights of pasture were
therefore integral portions of, and essential adjuncts to, the ancient
tillage system. No rights of common of pasture could be claimed
by the general public. The only persons by whom they could be
acquired and enjoyed were the occupiers of arable holdings. It was
as occupiers of portions of the tilled land, which was in fact or in
theory attached to their homes, that cottagers claimed and exercised
grazing privileges. On most manors three distinct kinds of common
rights existed. The first kind is, in this connection, unimportant,
though its creation marks an improvement in agricultural practices
and a step towards the break-up of the early open-field system. It
arose when the partners in a village farm agreed, with the sanction
of the lord of the manor, to set aside a portion of their joint arable
holdings for pasture, to be used in common in a “stinted” or
regulated manner. ‘‘ There is commonly,” says Fitzherbert,? “a
common close taken in out of the common fields by tenants of the
same towne, in which close every man is stinted and set to a cer-
taintie how many beasts he shall have in common.” ‘The second
class of common of pasture consisted of rights enjoyed by the
partners of the agrarian association over the whole cultivated area
of the village farm, both over the arable portion that lay fallow in
rotation, and over all the other arable lands and meadows, after
the crops had been cleared and before the land was again sown or

1 See chapter i. pp. 23-27.

* The Boke of Surveyeng and Improvementes (1523), ed. 1539, chap. ix.

VARIOUS RIGHTS OF COMMON 37

put up for hay. The third kind of common of pasture consisted
of rights over that part of the manor which was neither arable nor
meadow,—the outlying portions, which were left in their natural
condition,—the pastures, moors, wastes, woods, and heaths, which
had never been tilled. These rights were attached to the arable
holdings of manorial tenants, and to the occupation of particular
cottages on the manor, and, when the strictness of the ancient
system relaxed, might also be acquired by neighbours and strangers
who neither lived nor held land within the manor. “In these
commons,” says Fitzherbert, ‘the lord should not be stinted
because the whole common is his own.”

Rights of common of pasture over cultivated or commonable
land, under the second heading, were enjoyed by the partners in
the village farm, were exercised in virtue of their arable holdings,
were limited to the extent of the farm, and could only be extinguished
by the agreement of the co-partners. But if the lord of the manor,
as a partner in the farm, had allowed portions of his demesne to be
intermixed with the strips of his tenants, he could withdraw those
portions at will, even though their withdrawal diminished the com-
monable area of cultivated land. With this exception, land subject
to these rights of common could not be freed by any individual
tenant, unless the main body of his farming partners assented.

Rights of common of pasture over the untilled land, under the
third heading, were at first confined to the occupiers of arable
holdings on the manor. In process of time, however, they were
less narrowly limited. They could not be enjoyed by a landless
public ; but they might be exercised by persons living both within
and without the manor. In the case of persons living within the
manor, the enjoyment of common rights belonged to the occupation
of arable holdings or of particular cottages to which arable land had
been or was attached. In the case of persons living outside the
manor, rights might be acquired by neighbours and strangers,
either by direct grant from the lord of the manor, or, through his
sufferance, by long usage. As a general rule, the number of live-
stock which each manorial tenant or freeholder could pasture on
the wastes was fixed, or capable of being fixed, in proportion to his
holding. Vaguer rights were acquired by neighbours and strangers,
and it was in these cases mainly that the lord’s right of enclosure
was successfully resisted. At common law it seems that, against

1 Surveying, chap. iv.

38 THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR

his own customary tenants, the lord of the manor could always
enclose the wastes at pleasure. Whether before 1236 he had the
same power at common law against the free tenants of the manor is
disputed. Be this as it may, the Statute of Merton! in that year
empowered the lord of the manor to enclose against his free tenants,
provided enough pasture was left to satisfy his previous grants of
rights of common. Fifty years later, the Statute of Westminster ?
(1285) extended the lord’s right of enclosure to the case of those
neighbours and strangers who had acquired grazing rights, subject
to the same condition of sufficiency of pasture. Practically the
existence of rights of common of pasture only prevented enclosures
when the rights were enjoyed by the associated body of tenants
over one another’s cultivated and commonable land, or when
general rights, vaguely expressed, had been acquired by strangers
or neighbours over the untilled wastes of the lord of the manor.
Unless a custom to the contrary could be established, an enclosure
of untilled waste by the lord of the manor would be upheld in the
law courts, provided that the number of live-stock which could be
turned out by the commoners was certain or capable of being
ascertained, and that enough pasture was left to satisfy the grazing
rights.

As early as the end of the twelfth century, landlords had begun
to withdraw their demesne lands from the village farm, to con-
solidate, enclose, and cultivate them in separate ownership. They
had also pared the outskirts of their woods and chases, reclaimed
and enclosed these “ assart’’ lands, as they were called, and either
added them to their demesnes or let them in several occupations.
They had also begun to encourage partners in village farms ? to
agree among themselves, to extinguish their mutual rights of
common over the cultivated land which they occupied, to con-
solidate their holdings by exchange, and to till them as separate
farms. The pace at which these enclosures proceeded, and the
extent to which they were carried, varied with each county and
almost with each manor. But by the end of the fifteenth century,
though the great bulk of the village farms remained untouched, the, ,
area of land over which manorial tenants enjoyed rights of common | |
was considerably diminished, partly by the action of lords of the |
manors, partly by that of the tenants themselves. Portions of the

120 Hen. ITI. ce. 4. 213 Ed. I. c. 46.
° See chapter i. p. 6, note 1, and pp. 23-27.

MONEY RENTS AND WAGES 39

untilled waste had been enclosed, reduced to cultivation, and let
in separate farms to rent-paying leaseholders, and to copyholders,
who were admitted to their tenancies in the Court Baron and
entered as tenants on the court roll. ‘‘ Many of the lordes,” says
Fitzherbert, ‘‘ have enclosed a great part of their waste grounds,
and straightened their tenants of their commons within.”’ So also,
by withdrawing those parts of the cultivated demesne which lay in
the village fields, and letting them in small compact holdings, they
had reduced the area of cultivated land over which common of
pasture was enjoyed. Fitzherbert notes that “ the mooste part of
the lordes have enclosed their demeyn landes and medows, and
kepe them in severaltie, so that theyr tenauntes have no comyn
with them therein.’ Finally, the tenants themselves followed the
example of their landlords. Wherever the custom of the manor
permitted the practice, tenants and partners in the village farms
accepted “‘ licenses to enclose part of their arable land, and to take
in new intakes or closes out of the commons,” or agreed with their
fellow-commoners to extinguish, temporarily or permanently, their
mutual rights to graze each other’s arable and meadow lands after
the crops had been cleared.

At first the holdings, whether separate or associated, were, as
has been previously described, rented by labour services or produce-
rents. But from the latter half of the thirteenth century onwards
a change had been taking place. Landowners, who were them-
selves exchanging their personal services for cash equivalents,
needed money not only to make the purchases required by an
advancing standard of living, but to satisfy the demands of the
royal tax-collectors. In their land they found a new source of
income. They still kept their demesnes in hand; but they pre-
ferred to cultivate these home farms by the contract services of
hired men, whether servants in husbandry or day labourers, instead
of relying on the compulsory labour of tenants, which it was difficult
and expensive to supervise. They were, therefore, willing to
commute for money payments the team dues, and, to a less extent,
the manual dues, by which much of the manorial land was rented—
whether in the whole or in part, whether temporarily or permanently.
Those who owed the personal services were on their side eager to
pay the cash equivalents. The money payments freed them from
labour obligations which necessarily interfered with their own agri-
cultural operations, and enabled them to devote themselves, con-

40 THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR

tinuously and exclusively, to the cultivation of their own holdings.
Their places on the demesne land were taken by wage-earning farm-
servants or hired labourers, recruited from the landless sox of
tenants, or from cottagers who either had no holding at all or not
enough to supply them with the necessaries of life. Thus there
were hired farm-servants and day-labourers cultivating the
demesne land for money wages; tenants paying money rents
only for their holdings; others who still paid their whole rent
in produce or in labour; others whose labour services had been
partially commuted for money payments, either for a period or
permanently.

The local and gradual break-up of the manorial organisation of
agricultural labour was accelerated by the Black Death (1348-9).
Entering England through the port of Weymouth in August, 1348,
the plague spread to the north before it died out in the autumn of
the following year. It had been preceded by several years of
dearth and pestilence, and it was succeeded by four outbreaks of
similar disease before the end of the century. During its ravages
it destroyed from one-third to one-half of the population. Lords
of manors suffered both as owners of land and as employers of
labour. Whole families were swept away, and large quantities of
land were thrown on the hands of landlords by the deaths of free-
holders and customary tenants without heirs or descendants.
Numbers of bondmen took advantage of the general confusion,
threw up their holdings, escaped into the towns, or joined the ranks
of free labourers. Their derelict holdings increased the mass of
untenanted land, and their flight diminished the amount of resident
labour available for the cultivation of the home farm. Those
tenants who remained on the manor found in the landlord’s diffi-
culty their opportunity of demanding increased wages, of commuting
labour services for money payments,! of enlarging the size of their

1 Before the Black Death, on 81 manors, the services of tenants supplied
the necessary farm labour on the demesnes in the following proportions :
on 44, the whole; on 22, the half; on 9, an inconsiderable portion; on 6,
all labour services were commuted. After the Black Death (1371-80), on
126 manors, the proportions were as follows: on 22, the whole; on 25, the
half ; on 39, an inconsiderable portion ; on 40, all labour services were com-
muted. The End of Villainage in England, by T. W. Page (Publications of
the American Economic Association, May, 1900), pp. 44-46, 59-65.

Miss Davenport (The Economic Development of a Norfolk Manor, 1906,
pp. 52, 58) says that, out of 3219 services charged on the lands of Forncett
Manor in 1376, only 195 were available in 1406.

STATUTES OF LABOUR 4]

holdings, of establishing the principle of competitive rents. The
“Great Death ” in fact produced the natural results. There was
a fall in rents and a rise in wages, because the supply of land exceeded
the demand, and the demand for labour was greater than the
supply.

Legislation came to the aid of landowners by endeavouring to
maintain the supply of labour and to regulate the rise both of wages
and of prices. The statutes clearly illustrate the difficulties of
landlords and consumers. The crisis was so abnormal that unusual
action seemed justifiable. In the plague years of 1348-9 agricultural
labour was so scarce that panic wages were asked and paid. A
similar rise in prices took place simultaneously. So exorbitant did
the demands both of labourers and producers appear, following as
they did on a previous rise in both wages and prices, that a royal
proclamation was issued in 1349. It ordered all men and women,
“bond or free,’’—unless living on their own resources, tilling their
own land, employed in merchandise, or exercising some craft,—
to work on the land where they lived at the rate of wages current
in 1346. Those who gave or took higher wages were fined treble
or double the sums so given or received. The claim of lords of
manors to the services of their own men was acknowledged. But
their claim was no longer exclusive ; they were not to employ more
labour than they absolutely required. The king’s proclamation
was not universally obeyed. Employers had either to lose their
crops or yield to ‘“‘ the proud and covetuous desires ”’ of the men.
They were indeed placed in a difficulty. On the one hand, men
could not be hired under threepence to perform the same services
which had been recently commuted for a half-penny. On the
other hand, the strike was well-aimed and well-timed. It hit the
most vulnerable points. The classes of agricultural labourers
against whom the proclamation was specially directed were ser-
vants in husbandry, mowers, reapers, and harvesters. Servants in
husbandry, boarding at the home-farm or the houses of the larger
tenants, were the ploughmen, carters, cowherds, shepherds, milk-
maids, and swineherds, who had the care of the live-stock. They,
like the harvesters, were indispensable. If the crops were not
harvested when ripe, they spoiled ; if the live-stock were neglected,
they died. To solve the difficulty Parliament itself intervened.
The provisions of the proclamation were supplemented by the
first Statute of Labourers (1349, 23 Ed. ITI.), and expanded by a

42 THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR

series of Acts extending over the next 150 years! The stocks,
imprisonment, outlawry, and branding were the punishments of
those who refused to work, or absented themselves without licence
from the hundred where they lived. Every boy or girl, who had
served in husbandry up to the age of twelve “‘ at the plough or cart,”
was bound to “‘ abide at the same labour.” Justices, either of the
Peace or under a special commission, were sworn to enforce the

Acts, and to fix the rates of wages at which labourers could be

compelled to serve.

How far this legislation attained its immediate ends it is difficult
to say; the repeated re-enactment of labour laws, the petitions
of employers, and the preambles to successive statutes may seem
to suggest that it failed. On the other hand, there is abundant
evidence? that the law was rigorously enforced, and this would
naturally be inferred from the fact that its administration was
‘entrusted to officials who were directly interested in compelling
obedience to its provisions. The rise both in wages and prices was
great. But the statutes undoubtedly prevented either from
reaching famine height. Whether they were completely successful
or not, they embittered the relations between employers and
employed, and so prepared the ground for the Peasants’ Rising of
1381. Confronted by a discontented peasantry, burdened with
large tracts of land which threatened to pass out of cultivation,
hampered by the scarcity and dearness of labour, landlords turned
in new directions for relief. Here and there, where the climate
favoured the expedient, they reduced their labour-bills by laying
down tracts of arable land to pasture. Elsewhere the demesnes
were let off in separate farms at money rents. Often, in order to
secure tenants, the land was let on the “ stock and land ” system,
similar to that of the métayer, the landlord finding the stock and
implements. Sometimes the entire manor was leased to one or

1 #.g. 1360-1 (34 Ed. IIT. ce. 10, 11); 1368 (42 Ed. IIT. c. 6) ; 1377 (1 Rie. 1.
. 6); 1385 (8 Ric. II. ec. 2); 1388 (12 Ric. II. ce. 3-9); 1402 (4 Hen. IV.
. 14); 1405 (7 Hen. IV. c. 17); 1423 (2 Hen. VI. c. 18); 1427 (6 Hen. VI.
. 8); 1429 (8 Hen. VI. c. 8); 1444 (23 Hen. VI. ce. 12); 1495 (11 Hen. VII.
. 22); 1496 (12 Hen. VII.c.3); 1514 (6 Hen. VIII. c. 3); 1563 (5 Eliz.
4).
2 Miss Putnam’s Enforcement of the Statutes of Labourers (1908), (Columbia
University : Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, vol. xxxii.) is
an exhaustive commentary on the administration of the law from 1349 to
1360.

992008 8

THE MANOR OF CASTLE COMBE 43

more tenants, who paid a fixed annual rent for the whole, and then
sub-let portions of the land.t

Two examples of this gradual transformation of the manorial
system may be quoted. In the first instance—that of Castle Combe ?
in Wiltshire—the neighbourhood of a clothmaking industry may
have made the process of change exceptionally rapid, even for the
south of England. At the Domesday Survey the manor contained
1200 acres under the plough. Of this arable land, 480 acres were
in the lord’s demesne, cultivated by 13 serfs and the team and
manual labour of the manorial tenants. The remainder of the
arable area (720 acres) was occupied by 5 villeins, 7 bordars, and
5 cottagers. There was a wood of a mile and half in length by
three quarters of a mile in breadth. There were also three water
mills. The whole population consisted of bondmen: none were,
in the eye of the law, free. In 1340 the tenemental land had
increased to nearly 1000 acres. There were ten freemen, holding
between them 247 acres of arable land. Of these freemen, one of
the three millers held an estate of inheritance to himself and his
heirs, at a fixed quit-rent, subject to a heriot and attendance at
the manorial courts. The nine remaining freemen, among whom
were the other two millers, held their land at will at fixed money
rents and similar services. The rest of the inhabitants were still
bondmen. Fifteen customary tenants occupied for the term of
two lives 540 arable acres, in holdings of from 60 to 30 acres, partly
by money rents, partly by labour services. Eleven others held
15 acres each (165 acres) for two lives, paying their rent only by
labour on the demesne; but in addition nine of them also held
crofts, for which they paid annual money rents. All these
classes, in virtue of their holdings, were protected against caprices
of the lord’s will by manorial customs. Many of them remained
bondmen in status, but the condition of their tenure was raised.
Hight ‘“‘ Monday-men”’ held cottages and crofts or curtilages by
labour services only. These thirty-four bondmen, at the will of

1 Thus the land of the manor of Hawsted in Suffolk was let in 1410 by
Sir William Clopton to Walter Bone, Sir William reserving the manor-house
and the fines and other legal rights of a manor (History of Hawsted, pp.
193-5).

2 History of the Manor, etc. of Castle Combe, by G. Poulett Scrope (1852).
The areas are calculated on the assumption that the local ‘ carucate ’’ con-
tained 120 acres. Whatever the actual acreage may have been, the pro-
portions remain the same.

44 THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR

the lord, could buy themselves out of their labour obligations on
payment of the cash values which are entered against their services
in the steward’s book. In this event substitutes were provided
in the twelve cottagers, who paid a fixed money rent for their
cottages. Immediately after the ‘“‘ Great Death” the final stage
is reached. In 1352 the demesne was cut up into separate farms,
and let on money rents. Labour services were therefore no longer
needed, and were either merged in the copyhold rents or allowed
to die out.

The second instance, that of the vast estates of the Berkeleys,
covers a wider area. The policy adopted by the family in the
management of their manors in Gloucestershire, Somersetshire,
Essex, and elsewhere, was in one important respect consistent from
1189 to 1417. Throughout the whole period, successive lords
aimed at increasing their enclosures. They began to withdraw
those portions of the demesne which lay in ‘“‘ common fields, here
one acre or ridge, and there an other, one man’s intermixt with an
other,” to consolidate them, free them from common, and enclose.
By exchange with free tenants, other lands were thrown together
and similarly treated. The skirts of woods and chases were taken
in hand, and hundreds of acres of “‘ assart ’’ land were enclosed.
Sometimes these enclosures were made by agreement ; sometimes
without. Maurice de Berkeley (1243-81) had within his manor of
Hame “a wood called whitclive wood, adioinynge whereunto were
his Tenants’ arrable and pasture grounds and likewise of divers
freeholders. This hee fancieth to reduce into a parke ; hee treateth
with freeholder and tenant for buyinge or exchanginge of such of
their lands lyeing neere the said wood as hee fancied: In which
wood, also, many others had comon of pasture for theire cattle all
tymes of the yeare, (for noe woods or grounds, in effect, till the Eve
of this age, were inclosed or held in severalty :) with theis also hee
treatieth for releases of their comon: After some labor spent, and
not prevailinge to such effect as hee aymed at: hee remembered
(as it seemeth) the Adage, multa non laudantur nisi prius peracta :
many actions are not praisworthy till they bee done: Hee there-
fore on a sodaine resolutely incloseth soe much of each man’s land
unto his sayd wood as hee desired: maketh it a parke, placeth
keepers, and storeth it with Deere, And called it, as to this day it is,
Whitclyve parke. They seeing what was done, and this lord
offeringe compositions and exchanges as before, most of them

THE BERKELEY ESTATES 45

soone agreed, when there was noe remedy. ... Those few that
remayned obstinate fell after upon his sonne with suites, to theire
small confort and less gaines.”’ 1

For the first 140 years of the period (1189-1417) the lords of
Berkeley steadily pursued the plan of converting customary
tenancies and tenancies of newly enclosed lands into freeholds of
inheritance at fixed quit-rents which represented the rack-rents
then current. They seem to have feared that in future years the
income of their land would fall rather than rise. Robert de Berke-
ley began the policy (1189-1220) ; it was continued by his successor,
Maurice ; it culminated in the time of Thomas, first Lord Berkeley
(1281-1321), who himself created 800 of these freeholds, many of
which still remained when John Smyth wrote the history of the
family in 1628. This family policy was, however, completely
reversed by his grandson Thomas, third Lord Berkeley (1326-61).
Many hundreds of the freeholds created by his predecessors were
repurchased, and let at rack-rents. His example was, for the next
half century, actively followed by his successors. But for this
reversal of the family policy, Smyth calculates that three-quarters
of the Berkeley Estates would have been freeholds of inheritance,
paying fixed quit-rents of fourpence or sixpence an acre for land
which in 1628 was worth twelve shillings.

At no time during the period (1189-1415) was any large proportion
of the demesne lands divided and let on lease. The Berkeleys
themselves farmed on a gigantic scale through their bailiffs and
their reeves. Thus the third lord (1326-61) kept in his own hands
the demesnes of upwards of 75 manors, stocking them with his
own oxen, cows, sheep, and swine. On no manor did the flock of
sheep number less than 300; on some it reached 1500. At Bever-
ston in Gloucestershire, in the seventh year of Edward III., he
sheared 5775 sheep. From these manors his supplies were drawn
to feed each day at his ‘“‘ standing-house ’’ 300 persons and 100
horses. Thence came every year geese, ducks, peacocks, capons,
hens and chickens,—200 of each kind, many thousands of eggs
and 1000 pigeons, coming from a single manor,—stores of honey,
wax, and nuts, an “ uncredible ’”? number of oxen, bullocks, calves,
sheep and lambs, and vast quantities of wheat, rye, barley, oats,
pease, beans, apples, and pears. All was accounted for with minute
detail by the stewards, reeves, and bailiffs. Their accounts for

1 Lives of the Berkeleys, vol. i. pp. 140-1.

46 THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR

the manors and for the household show what amount of corn
remained in the granary from the previous year; how much
was each year reaped and winnowed, sold at markets, shipped to
sea; how much was consumed in the lord’s house, in his stable,
in his kennels, in the poultry yard, or in the falcons’ mews; how
much was malted; how much was given to the poor, to friars
and other religious orders by way of yearly allowances.

The policy of repurchasing freeholds and of increasing enclosures
was pursued by the fourth lord (1361-68) and by his son (1368-
1417). But from 1385 onwards the practice of farming the
demesne lands through the reeves was abandoned. ‘“ Then,” says
Smyth, “began the times to alter, and hee with them (much
occasioned by the insurrection of Wat Tyler and generally of all
the Comons in the land,) And then instead of manureing his
demesnes in each manor with his own servants, oxen, kine, sheep,
swine, poultry and the like, under the oversight of the Reeves of
the manors. ... This lord began to joyst and tack in other
mens cattle into his pasture grounds by the week, month, and
quarter: And to sell his meadow grounds by the acre; and so
between wind and water (as it were) continued part in tillage,
and part let out and joysted as aforesaid for the rest of that
kings raigne. And after, in the time of Henry the fourth, let
out by the year stil more and more by the acre as hee found
chapmen and price to his likeing.”’! The landlord was ceasing to
be a patriarchal farmer and becoming only a rent-receiver. The
process went on with increasing rapidity. By the end of the reign
of Edward IV. the greater part of the manors and demesnes had
been let to tenants, either on rack-rents or at lesser rents with the
reservation of a fine. The day-works due from the old customary
tenants, in proportion to their holdings of yard-lands and “ far-
rundells,” together with their produce rents, were commuted into
money equivalents and added to the new rents.

The story of the Manor of Castle Combe and of the estates of the
Berkeleys holds true, with many variations, of England generally.
Everywhere the cultivation of demesnes by the labour services of
manorial tenants was gradually abandoned, and the older system
replaced by separate farms, let for money rents to individual
occupiers. The change proceeded more rapidly in the south and
south-west than in the north and east. But as the fifteenth century

1 Lives of the Berkeleys, vol. ii. pp. 5-6.

FREE LABOURERS 47

neared its close the relations between owners, occupiers, and cul-
tivators of land had, in many parts of England, assumed a more
modern aspect. There was a large increase in the number of free-
holders, and of leaseholding or copyholding farmers renting land in
individual occupation ; there was also an increase in the number
of free labourers whose only capital was their labour. The complete
abolition of villeinage had been demanded by the people in the
rising of 1381, and one of the principal objects of the rioters had
been the destruction of the rolls of the manor courts, which were
the evidence not only of their titles but of their disabilities. Possibly
they may have hoped that, if the court rolls were destroyed, they
would be left in undisturbed possession of their holdings. Possibly
they may have expected to escape the payment of the vexatious
fines and licences incidental to the tenure, and there is some suggestion
that landlords were endeavouring to recoup themselves for the loss
of income, which the commutation of labour services and the
decrease of the manorial population had produced, by the stricter
exaction of payments. Eighty years later the class of villeins,
which once had included the great mass of the rural population,
was fast disappearing. The more prosperous members of the class
had retained their hold on the land, whether on the demesnes, the
assart lands, or the village farms. Some had become freeholders ;
others rented their holdings at fixed money rents on leases for a
term of years or for lives; others, whose rights were derived from
ancient customs, were admitted as copyholders for lives and possibly
of inheritance on the court roll of the manor. The uncertainty of
villein tenure was gone, and its brand of personal servitude could
not long continue when the old relation of feudal lord and dependent
was exchanged for that of landlord and tenant or of employer and
employed, and was expressed in cash instead of personal services.
Even landless bondmen had for the most part gained their personal
freedom. Some purchased freedom by money payments; on
some the influence of the Church, or the pricking of conscience
conferred it by a deathbed emancipation ; the legal presumption
of natural liberty and the decisions of the law courts bestowed it
on others. Here a bondman escaped from the manor and was
lost sight of ; here a man took refuge in a town ; another accepted
the tawny livery of the Berkeleys or of some other great lord; a
fourth received the tonsure, or took service in a monastery, as a
lay brother ; a fifth made freedom the condition on which he would

48 THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR

take up land. In numerous cases the services were lost from
neglect, because they ceased to be profitable when landlords aban-
doned farming and became only rent-receivers. In all these ways
the ranks of freemen and free labourers were recruited. The
numbers of villeins dwindled fast. But the tenure survived the
Tudor period. Its abolition was demanded in the eastern counties
during Kett’s rebellion (1549), and all men who had not been
legally emancipated lived throughout the reign of Elizabeth in
peril that its incidents might be revived against them. Even the
old personal services still lingered. Till the end of the eighteenth
century, labour dues as part of the rent of land were enforced in
the north-west of England. Half the county of Cumberland was
still unenclosed in 1794. ‘“‘ By far the greatest part of this county
was held under lords of manors, by that species of vassalage, called
customary tenure; subject to the payment of fines and heriots, on
alienation, death of the lord, or death of tenant, and the payment
of certain annual rents, and performance of various services, called
Boon-days, such as getting and leading the lord’s peats, plowing
and harrowing his land, reaping his corn, hay-making, carrying
letters, etc., etc., whenever summoned by the lord.”

The fifteenth century lies midway between two recognised periods
of distress among the rural population. Agriculturally, its history
is almost a blank. The silence has been interpreted in different
ways. Some writers have considered it as a time of progress ;
others have read it as the reverse. There is evidence that the
principal sufferers by the dynastic and aristocratic struggle of the
Roses were the nobility and the soldiers, that country districts
were not laid waste, and that villages and their populations were
neither destroyed nor harried. If so, rural life may have advanced
peacefully, profiting by the absorption of landowners in more
exciting pursuits than the administration of their estates. When
once the struggle was ended, a new world began to piece itself
together. Accepting the spirit of the coming age, agriculture
reorganised itself on a money basis, and two classes emerge into
prominence—capitalist _tenant-farmers and free but landless
labourers. Both had been slowly forming during the first three
quarters of the century : both were equally essential to the changed
conditions of farming. The tenant-farmer had risen in the social

1General View of the Agriculture of the County of Cumberland, by John
Bailey and George Culley (1794), p. 11.

FORMATION OF NEW CLASSES 49

scale; the labourer, if the possession of land alone measured his
position in society, had fallen. Mediaeval organisations of trade
were undergoing a similar transformation. Guilds, like village
farms, had maintained a certain equality of wealth and position
among the master craftsmen, and apprentices and journeymen not
only looked to become masters themselves, but shared in the
advantages of membership of the organised crafts. At the close
of the fifteenth century, the wealthier liveried masters began, like
capitalist tenant-farmers, to form a higher rank within the guild,
and to control and administer its policy. Below them in the scale
a new class was coming into existence. Independent journeymen
were increasing in number—hired artisans who derived no benefits
from the guilds, enjoyed no prospect of becoming master-craftsmen,
and depended for their livelihood, like the free labourer divorced
from the soil, on employment and wages. For the rising classes,
the fifteenth century may have been a period of prosperity ; for
the classes which were in some respects falling, it was probably
a time of adversity. Only thus can the rose-coloured descriptions
of writers like Sir John Fortescue be reconciled with the darker
accounts which might be put together from other sources. It is
not in the gay holiday scenes of a Chaucer, but in the grimly realistic
pictures of a Langland that the features of rural life are most truly
painted.

Leaseholders and copyholders in separate occupation of farms
had increased rapidly in number as well as in importance. Their
ranks were swollen by the tenants of the reclaimed wastes, by those
among whom the demesne was now divided, and by holders of the
“stock and land ” leases who had saved sufficient capital to stand
on their own feet ; by men of capacity and enterprise, who realised
the superior advantages of a separate holding, however small; by
hundreds of the old customary tenants, who found that the rents
for which their personal services had been commuted were higher
than the competitive money rents which land could command when
the supply was excessive. The terms for which leases ran grew
longer. They advanced from a year to five years, then to seven
years, then to ten years, then to twenty-one, then to lives, and often
to fee farm. The increasingly prolonged term illustrates the greater
confidence in the stability of the government. It also indicates,
on the part of the farmer, a growing sense of the legal security
which leases afforded ; on the part of landowners, the wish to retain

D

50 THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR

as long as possible their responsible tenants ; and, among the more
far-sighted of the tenantry, a desire to rid themselves of the imper-
fect ownership which customary tenure implied. Finally, farms were
increasing in size. The word “farm ” was itself changing its mean-
ing from the stipulated rent to the area of land out of which the
payment issued. In this transition another meaning of the word
was lost. In many parts of England at that time, and in the north
of England down to the last century, a farm meant that definite
area of land which afforded a living to the occupier and his family
By the end of the fifteenth century it had acquired its modern
sense of an indefinite area of land occupied by one tenant at one
rent. Complaints of the practice of throwing together a number
of men’s “ livings ”’ into one holding in one man’s occupation begin
to be frequent, and are directed against the absorption of the small
arable holdings of from ten to thirty acres. They occur in sermons,
in Petitions to the King, in doggerel verse. The letter of the Vicar
of Quinton in Gloucestershire, written to the President of Magdalen
College, Oxford,” at the close of the fifteenth century, breathes the
spirit of the twentieth century. Magdalen College owned an estate in
the parish of Quinton, and the president hesitated whether the
College should let the land as one farm, or, as we should now say,
let it in small holdings. The vicar appeals on behalf of his parish-
ioners. ‘‘ Aftur my sympull reson,” he writes, “it is mor meritory
to support and succur a comynte [community] then one mane,
yowre tenan[ts] rathere then a stronge man, the pore and the
innocent for [instead of] a gentylman or a gentylman’s man.”
Whatever may have resulted from the vicar’s appeal, circum-
stances generally favoured the multiplication of separate holdings
and their increase to a size which rendered the employment of
money as well as of labour remunerative. Practical agriculturists,
like Fitzherbert, urge every man to “ change fields with his neigh-
bour, so that he may lay his lands together,’ keep more live-stock,
improve the soil by their ““ compostynge,” and rest his corn land
when it becomes impoverished. The long wars with France were
over; the civil strife between York and Lancaster was ended ;
the central government under Henry VII. was firmly established ;
trade was beginning to expand ; population, arrested in its increase
since the death of Edward I., was once more growing. On the

1 The Ancient Farms of Northumberland, by F. W. Dendy (1893), pp. 11-19.
2 England in the Fifteenth Century, by the Rev. W. Denton (1888), p. 318.

74

—E

PASTON AND LATIMER 51

other hand, land had depreciated in value; rents had declined ;
farming had deteriorated ; useful practices had been discontinued ;
cattle were dwindling in size and weight; the common pastures
had become infected with “‘murrain”; the arable area of open-
fields had grown less productive, and without manure its fertility
could not be restored. Land was cheap to buy and cheap to rent.
Enterprising purchasers and farmers could make it pay, if they
realised the advantages of separate occupation, of employing money
on the land, of reviving obsolete practices like marling, and, in
certain climates, of adopting a convertible husbandry that adapted
itself to fluctuating needs better than the open-field system, which
rigidly regulated the cultivation of the soil and permanently separ-
ated arable land from pasture. The one obstacle to the success of
the new tenant-farmer was the scarcity and dearness of labour.
But sheep-grazing cut down labour bills, while legislation checked
the natural rise of wages, and barred the outlet into towns against
agricultural labourers and their sons. Even a high rate of wages
often proved nominal rather than real, for, under the Statutes of
Labourers, farmers had the option of paying their men in corn at
the statutory price of 6s. 8d. a quarter when corn fell below that
price, or in money when the price of corn approached or exceeded
the statutory figure.

Two contemporary pictures have been painted of the lives of
tenant-farmers, who were fathers of famous sons—one at the
opening, the other at the close, of the fifteenth century. Each
picture seems to be more or less typical of the farming class at the
periods to which they belong. Clement Paston, at the beginning
of the century, lived at the village of Paston, near Mundesley in
Norfolk! ‘‘ He was,” says an anonymous writer who was no
friend to the family, “a good plain husband(man), and lived upon
his land that he had in Paston, and kept thereon a plough all times
in the year, and sometimes in barlysell two ploughs. The saide
Clement yede (went) at one plough both winter and summer, and
he rode to mill on the bare horseback with his corn under him,
and brought home meal again under him, and also drove his cart
with divers corns to Wynterton to sell as a good husband(man)
ought to do.” He had at the most 100 or 120 acres of land, some of
it copyhold, and a “little poor water-mill.’”” He married a bond-
woman. Their son William, who was kept at school, often on

1 Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, Introduction, vol. i. pp. 28-30.

52 THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR

borrowed money, became a distinguished lawyer, a sergeant-at-law,
in 1429 a Judge of the Common Pleas, and the founder of the
Paston family. At the close of the same century, Hugh Latimer
the father of the Bishop of Worcester, was a farmer in Leicester-
shire. Preaching before Edward VI., the son describes his father’s
circumstances. The elder Latimer rented some 200 acres of arable
land witk rights of common of pasture, employed half a dozen men
on his farm besides women servants, ran 100 sheep, milked 30 cows,
owned oxen for ploughing, and a horse for riding or for the king’s
service. He portioned his daughters with £50 or £60 apiece ; and,
besides teaching his son to “ lay his body in the bow,” sent him to
school and college. He was hospitable to his neighbours and
charitable to the needy. And this he did out of the profits of his
farm.

For wage-earning landless labourers, the last 130 years of the
period from 1200 to 1485 were probably, in some respects, unpros-
perous. They now were exposed to the fluctuations, not only of
the price of necessaries, but of the labour market. Yet agricultural
change had not affected them wholly for the worse. The bright
side was the bondman’s passage towards personal freedom ; the
darkest feature was his divorce from the soil. To some extent his
severance from the land was the means and the price of his personal
emancipation.

The surrender of the hold on the land was, at this period, mainly
due to voluntary action by the villeins themselves; it was not
caused by clearances for sheep farming. A landlord had no desire
to lose them either as tenants or as labourers. Their flight threw
more land on his hands, and at the same time increased the scarcity
of labour for its cultivation. But villeins, whose holdings were
small, had little inducement to retain them, and much to gain by
escape. The sentimental objection to the tenure had been deepened
and embittered by the teaching of wandering friars and “ poor
preachers.” Freedom meant the rise out of a condition, the degra-
dation of which they had begun to feel with a new acuteness. It
meant also new possibilities. Beyond the limits of their own
manor, they might, as freemen, acquire other holdings, or join the
ranks of free labourers, or settle behind a city wall and practise
some handicraft. After the “‘ Black Death ” the prospect of employ-
ment in towns was good. Hands were at a premium. The great

1 Sermons (Parker Society), p. 101.

THE LABOURERS’ GAIN AND LOSS 53

scarcity of labour is proved by the fact that the severity of the
Labour Statutes was relaxed in the case of immigrants into London, A
and, temporarily, into Norwich. That the chances of town life
were in themselves sufficient inducements for flight from the manor
is shown by the willingness of villeins to surrender their holdings,
and purchase licences to live within the walls of cities. But very
often another cause must have made the voluntary severance from
the land a Hobson’s choice. The yield of arable land on open-
field farms was so small that farming scarcely provided necessaries.
Throughout the closing years of the fifteenth century, successive
outbreaks of murrain had killed numbers of cattle and sheep, swept
off geese and poultry, and even destroyed the bees. If the results
of similar outbreaks in the sixteenth century justify the conclusion,
it may be supposed that it was the live-stock of open-field farmers
which suffered most. Without stock small holders or cottagers
found common rights valueless, and their few acres of arable land
rather a burden than a profit. To such men the voluntary surrender
of holdings, with or without flight, might well seem the choice of a
lesser evil. For a time they may have prospered as labourers for
hire. But when the conversion of tillage to pasture had begun,
their daily employment and their harvest earnings were in peril.
In such conditions it must have been useless, if not impossible, to
enforce residence within the limits of the manor.

The possibility that the manor itself might not provide work for
its inhabitants was recognised in the labour legislation of the
period. Indirectly the Labour Statutes, though manifestly not
passed in the interest of labourers, aided their progress towards
freedom of movement and of contract. They broke down the
exclusive right which lords of the manor claimed over the personal
services of their manorial dependents. Hitherto no one could
employ a villein from another manor without the risk that this
superior claim might be asserted. Under the king’s proclamation
of 1349, the lord’s right is recognised, preferentially, but not
exclusively. He has the first claim, not the only claim, to the
services. He may not employ more labour than he absolutely
needs. When his requirements are satisfied, his villein may, and
on demand must, work for other employers. In the statutes them-
selves the same principle is carried further. Servants in husbandry
are bound to appear, tools in hand, in market towns to be publicly
hired, as, five centuries later in many parts of England, they

54 THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR

frequented the local statute fairs, or mops—cowmen with the hair
of cows twisted in their button-holes, or carters and ploughmen with
whip-cord in their hats. Thus the very legislation which was
designed to maintain the supply of rural labour and check migra-
tion into towns, introduces that principle of freedom of movement
which is essential to the modern relations of employer and employed.
In another respect, also, the Labour Statutes loosened the depend-
ence of bondmen on their manorial lords. The jurisdiction of the
king’s law courts was extended till it invaded the sacred precincts
of the manor court, and settled disputes between the lord and his
villeins. Wages even were no longer to be fixed as between a bond-
man and his feudal lord ; they were to be controlled by Justices of
the Peace acting as the king’s agents. It is not suggested that
the fifteenth century labourer benefited by a change which virtually
transferred the right of fixing wages to an association of employers.
But the transfer of authority was a not unimportant step towards the
complete collapse of the manorial organisation, and towards free
competition as the true basis of money wages.

THE PASSING OF THE MIDDLE AGES 55

CHAPTER III.

FARMING FOR PROFIT: PASTURE AND SHEEP-
GRAZING. 1485-1558.

The passing of the Middle Ages: enclosures in the sixteenth and eighteenth
centuries compared ; the commercial impulse and its results ; conversion
of tillage to pasture: enclosures and depopulation: legislation against
enclosures ; literary attack on enclosures ; the practical defence of en-
closures: larger farms in separate occupation: loss of employment ;
enclosures equitably arranged, or enforced by tyranny ; legal powers of _
landowners; open-field farmers not the chief sufferers _by—enclosures ;
scarcity of employment and rise in prices ; the new, 2w_ problem of poverty :
the ranks of vagrants; the Elizabethan fraternity of vagabonds.

Out of wars at home and abroad, and pestilences destructive both
to man and beast, emerged one great agricultural change which
by 1485 was practically completed. Feudal landowners, instead of
pursuing the patriarchal system of farming their own demesnes
by the labour services of their dependents, had become receivers of
rent. Home-farms and “assart”’ or reclaimed lands were culti-
vated, not by lords of the manor through bailiffs and labour-rents,
but by freeholders, leaseholders, copyholders, and hired labourers.

Further changes were close at hand. With the dawn of the Tudor \

period began the general movement which gradually transformed ‘
England into a mercantile country. The amount of money in
actual use was increasing ; men possessed more capital, could borrow
it more easily, and lay it out to greater advantage. Commerce
permeated national life. Feudalism was dead or dying, and trade
was climbing to its throne. The Middle Ages were passing into
modern times.

On the agricultural side, the spirit of trading competition gave
fresh impulse to an old movement which, in spite of a storm of
protest, continued in activity throughout the Tudor period, and,
after a century and a half of silent progress, became once more the
centre of literary controversy before it triumphed at the close of

56 FARMING FOR PROFIT

the reign of George III. That movement is described as enclosure,
and it is generally treated as necessarily destructive to the old
village farms. But the word includes various processes, some of
which rather strengthened than weakened the open-field system.
Some enclosures, such as closes for stock-feeding, intakes from the
common for arable purposes, even the not uncommon practice of
fencing portions of the open-fields for several occupation, whether
temporarily or permanently, were really efforts to adapt village
farms to changing needs. Another form of enclosure was the culti-
vation of new land obtained by clearing forests, approving portions
of wastes, or draining fens. Here also village farms were not
directly affected. Indirectly, indeed, these new enclosures pro-
duced a considerable effect. Much of the reclaimed land was tilled
for corn; thus the ancient arable soil was relieved from the former
necessity of bearing grain crops, and might not improbably be put
to the use for which it was best adapted. A third process was the
direct enclosure of open-fields and pasture commons. This form
generally appeared in the neighbourhood of towns, where the
demand for animal food and dairy produce was greatest and labour
found a ready market, or in counties where some manufacturing
industry prevailed and small grass holdings made a less exacting
claim on the time of the handicraftsmen than tillage. But what-
ever form the enclosure took, the general drift of the movement
was towards individual occupation of land. It was therefore
always, and particularly in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries,
directly opposed to the open-field system of farming in common.

At both periods that special form of enclosure was prominent
which meant the break-up of the mediaeval agrarian partnerships.
and the substitution of private enterprise for the collective efforts
of village associations. But in details the earlier and the later
movements were strongly contrasted. In the sixteenth century,
the change was opposed and partially arrested by legislation ; in
the eighteenth century, it received from Parliament encouragement
and support. Under Henry VIII., it was mainly inspired by com-
mercial advantage ; under George III., it was alleged to be enforced
by necessity. In the sixteenth century some of the grass-land was
undoubtedly used for grazing beasts. But it was mainly to supply
the growing wool trade that Tudor husbandmen substituted pasture
for tillage, sheep for corn. They took their seats on the wool-
sack, and maidens of all degrees were spinsters. Hanoverian

TUDOR AND HANOVERIAN ENCLOSURES 57

farmers reversed the process; they valued sheep for their mutton
instead of their fleeces, and concentrated their energies on the
production of bread and meat for the teeming populations of
manufacturing cities. Dearth of bread was in Tudor times the
most effective cry against enclosures; under George III. it was
the unanswerable plea for their extension. At the opening of the
sixteenth century, enclosure did not always mean improved farm-
ing; the conversion of arable land into inferior sheep-walk was
rather retrogression than progress. At the close of the eighteenth
century, it at least meant the opportunity for advance and for the
introduction of better practices. To some extent, indeed, the
different developments of the two movements measure the improve-
ments in the methods and the increase in the resources of Hanoverian
farmers. The Tudor husbandman might devote himself exclusively
to the one or the other of the two branches of farming ; but he had
not mastered the secret of their union. If he changed from tillage
to pasture, he did so completely. He could not, like his successor,
combine the two, and by the introduction of new crops, at once
grow more corn and carry more stock.

Agriculturally, the period which opens with the Battle of Bos-
worth and ends with the early years of Elizabeth is one of transition
towards the modern spirit and forms of land cultivation. Like all
transition periods, it is full of suffering for those who were least
able to adapt themselves to altered conditions. The ruin of noble
families by the Wars of the Roses, the lavish expenditure which
Henry VIII. made fashionable, the rise in prices, and the difficulty
of raising rents, compelled many “ unthrifty gentlemen ”’ to sell
their estates. The break-up of landed properties and their passage
into new hands favoured the introduction of the commercial impulse.
The landholders whose “unreasonable covetousness”’ is most
loudly condemned were mainly speculators in land, men who had
made money in business, had capital to invest, could afford the
expense of enclosures, and were determined to make their estates
pay. Such were ‘“‘ the Merchant Adventurers, Clothmakers, Gold-
smiths, Butchers, Tanners, and other Artificers,’’ —“‘ the merchants
of London” who “‘bie fermes out of the handes of worshypfull gentle-
men, honeste yeomen, and pore laborynge husbandes.”? Translated

1 Petition to Henry VIII. (1514), quoted by F. J. Furnivall in Ballads
from MSS., p. 101 (Publications of the Ballad Society, vol. 1.).

2 Thomas Lever’s Sermons (1550); Arber’s Reprints, p. 29.

58 FARMING FOR PROFIT

into the language of to-day, the old landlords had been satisfied
to draw from their estates certain advantages and a low percentage
of profit ; the new men required at the least a four per cent. return
in money on their investments. Feudal barons had partly valued
their land for the number of men-at-arms it furnished to their
banners ; Tudor landowners appraised its worth by the amount of
rent it paid into their coffers. Mediaeval husbandmen had been
content to extract from the soil the food which they needed for
themselves and their families. Tudor farmers despised self-
sufficing agriculture ; they aspired to be sellers and not consumers
only, to raise from their land profits as well as food. As trade
expanded, and towns grew, and English wool made its way into
continental cities, or was woven into cloth by English weavers,
new markets were created for agricultural produce. Fresh in-
centives stimulated individual enterprise, and both landlords and
tenants learned to look on the land they respectively owned or
cultivated as a commercial asset.

Among the results of this conquest of agriculture by the new
spirit of commercial competition three may be noticed—firstly,
the clearer recognition of the advantages of farms held in individual
occupation, large enough to make the employment of capital
remunerative ; secondly, the substitution of pasture for tillage,
of sheep for corn, of wool for meat; thirdly, the attack upon the
old agrarian partnerships in which lords of the manor, parsons,
freeholders, leaseholding farmers, copyholders, and cottagers had
hitherto associated to supply the wants of each village. Legisla-
tion failed to prevent a movement which harmonised and syn-
chronised with the progressive development of the nation on
commercial lines. But in its earlier stages, the consequences to
the rural population were serious. Many tenants lost their hold-
ings, many wage-earning labourers their employment, when land-
lords ‘‘ turned graziers,” and farmers cut down their labour-bills
by converting tillage into pasture. It is impossible to doubt the
reality of the distress. From 1487 onwards, literature, pamphlets,
doggerel ballads, sermons, liturgies, petitions, preambles to statutes,
Commissions of Enquiry, Acts of Parliament, bear witness to a
considerable depopulation of country districts. In the numerous
insurrections, which marked the sixteenth century and the early
years of the reign of James I., rural distress undoubtedly con-
tributed its share. But zealous advocates of Roman Catholicism

SHEEP-FARMING 59

found it useful to ally agrarian discontent with religious reaction,
and men like Protector Somerset thought it politic to attribute
anti-Protestant risings entirely to agricultural causes.

\ There was no novelty in the withdrawal of demesne lands from
the open-field farm and their partition into individual occupations ;
or in fencing off portions of the home-farm and of the reclaimed
** assart ’< lands as separate plots; or in the appropriation of parts
of the commonable waste for private use ; or in the encouragement
given to partners in the village association to throw their scattered
strips together into one compact holding’ Each of these processes
had been for many years in progress; each had necessitated
enclosures; none had required the decay of farm-houses and
cottages, loss of employment, eviction of tenants, or rural depopula-
tion. But from the Tudor enclosing movement these consequences
did necessarily result, because its objects were the promotion of
sheep-farming, the conversion of tillage into pasture, the con-
solidation and enlargemént of grass holdings. If farmers had not
yet at their disposal the means of realising the full truth of the
maxim that “ the foot of the sheep turns sand into gold,” the new
commercial aristocracy were quick to see that money was to be
made, or at least to be saved, by the growth of wool. It is true
that down to 1540 the prices of wool remained low ; but some at
least of the grass was taken up by the graziers, and the saving in
labour effected by pasture farming was great. Sheep could not be
herded with success on open commons, still less on the arable lands
of village farms, and small holdings were incompatible with large
flocks. It was these new elements which upset the calculations of
agriculturists like Fitzherbert (1523), or Cardinal Pole 1 in Starkey’s
Dialogue (1536), or Tusser (1557), or Standish (1611), who hoped
that the economic advantages of enclosure might be secured without
the social loss which the conversion of large tracts of arable land
into wide pasture farms inflicted on the rural population.

If evidence which is rarely impartial may be implicitly trusted,
considerable tracts of cultivated land were converted into wilder-
nesses, traversed only by shepherds and their dogs; roofless
granges and half-ruined churches alone marked the sites of former
hamlets; the “deserted village’’ was a reality of the sixteenth

1 In the Dialogue between Cardinal Pole and Thomas Lupset, Pole defends
enclosures for pasture on the plea that cattle, as well as corn, were necessary
for human food (England in the Reign of Henry VIII., ed. J. M. Cowper,
E.E.T.S., extra series xxxii. 1878).

60 FARMING FOR PROFIT

century. Already anxious for the maintenance of the national
supply of corn, men began to be alarmed at another result of the
movement which became increasingly prominent. John Rous!
(1411-91), chantry priest of Guy’s Cliffe and Warwickshire antiquary,
was the first to protest against the decay of population caused in
the midland counties by enclosures for pasture farming. To this
rural exodus the attention of Parliament had been called by the
Lord Chancellor in the first year of Richard III. (1484). Francis
Bacon, writing of the opening years of the reign of Henry VILI.,
says:? “‘Inclosures at that time began to be more frequent,
whereby arable land, which could not be manured without people
and families, was turned into pasture which was easily rid by a
few herdsmen ; and tenances for years, lives, and at will, whereupon
much of the yeomanry lived, were turned into demesnes. This
bred a decay of people.” So formidable did the danger begin to
appear, that in 1489 two Acts of Parliament were passed for its
prevention. The first Act was local, dealing with the, effects of
enclosures in the Isle of Wight from the point of view of national
defence ; the second is general, directed “‘ against the pulling down
of tounes ”’ (7.e. townships or villages). These Acts were the pre-
cursors of many others throughout the sixteenth century,* for-
bidding the conversion of arable land into pasture, ordering newly
laid pasture to be restored to tillage, directing enclosures to be
thrown down, requiring decayed houses to be rebuilt, limiting the
number of sheep and of farms which could legally be held by one
man, and imposing severe penalties for disobedience to the new
provisions.

No favour was shown by Parliament to enclosers, except perhaps
in the case of deer-parks. On the contrary, strenuous efforts were
repeatedly made to stop the process of enclosure. Nor was the
Government satisfied with passing laws and imposing penalties.
Wolsey personally interested himself in enforcing obedience to the
laws against the decay of houses and farm-buildings and against

1 Historia Regum Angliae, ed. 1745, pp. 116-24. But Thomas Hearne was
not always a reliable editor.

2 History of King Henry the Seventh (Works, ed. Spedding, vol. vi. pp.
93-4).

3 H.y. 1489 (4 Hen. VII. ce. 16, 19); 1514 (6 Hen. VIII. c. 5); 1515 (7 Hen.
VIII. c. 1); 1533-4 (25 Hen. VIII. c. 13); 1535-6 (27 Hen. VIII. c. 22);
1551-2 (5 and 6 Ed. VI. c. 5); 1555 (2 and 3 Phil. and Mary, c. 2); 1562-3
(5 Eliz. c. 2); 1593 (35 Eliz. c. 7, repealing part of 5 Eliz. c. 2); 1597-8 (39
Eliz. c. 1); 1601 (43 Eliz. c. 9); in 1624 the enclosure laws were repealed.

LEGISLATION AGAINST SHEEP-WALKS 61

the conversion of arable land to pasture. Active steps were taken
to see that buildings were restored and enclosures and ditches
levelled. In default, heavy penalties were exacted. A Com-
mission was appointed in 1517,! which enquired into all cases where
farm-houses had been destroyed since 1485, or where ploughs had
been put down by the increase of pasture farming. Similar
enquiries were held in 1548, 1566, and 1607. No doubt these
strenuous efforts checked the movement. But they failed to stop
it altogether. In this respect they succeeded no better in encourag-
ing tillage than the quaint pedantry of the law, which gave arable
land precedence over other land, or conferred on beasts of the
plough privileges that were denied to other animals. The new
legislation seems to have been satisfied, or evaded, without serious
difficulty ; partly, because compositions for breaches of its provisions
might be paid or exemptions purchased; partly, no doubt, because
the administration of the law was often entrusted to those who
were interested in making it a dead letter. The destruction of
farm buildings was forbidden ; but it was easy to keep within the
statute by retaining a single room for the shepherd or the milk-
maid ; a solitary furrow driven across newly laid pasture satisfied
the law that it should be restored to tillage ; the number of sheep
to be owned by one man was limited, but the ownership of flocks
might be fathered on sons or servants. Down to the middle of
the reign of Elizabeth the enclosing and grazing movement con-
tinued. At subsequent intervals it renewed its special activity
throughout the seventeenth century, when dairying began to claim
a larger share of the attention of farmers. It was restrained or
encouraged rather by natural causes than by legislation. Fluctua-
tions in the prices of wool or corn, the increased profits of improved
methods of arable farming, and the restoration of the fertility of
the ancient tilled land, which was brought back to the plough
after an enforced rest from excessive cropping, gradually restored
the preponderance of tillage over pasture.

The grievances of the rural population are to be gathered not only
from legislation, proclamations, petitions, articles of complaint, the
Returns of Commissioners, or the records of the law courts. They
are also written large in More’s Utopia, and in much of the ephemeral
literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The cry of
the people is heard, often in exaggerated tones, in the sermons of

1 The Domesday of Inclosures (1517-8), by I. S. Leadam, 2 vols. 1897.

62 FARMING FOR PROFIT

popular preachers like Tyndale, Becon, and Latimer, in the pam-
phlets of such writers as Simon Fish, Henry Brinklow, or Philip
Stubbes, or in the rhymes of versifiers like ‘‘ Sir’? William Forrest,
Robert Crowley, and Thomas Bastard, or in such anonymous
ballads as ‘‘ Nowe-a-dayes”’: 1
“The townes go down, the land decayes ;
Off cornefeyldes, playne layes (grass-land) ;

Gret men makithe now a dayes
A shepecott in the church.

Commons to close and kepe ;

Poor folk for bred to cry and wepe;

Towns pulled downe to pastur shepe ;

This ys the new gyse!”’

Throughout the burden is the same—enclosure of commons, con-
version of plough-land into pasture, sheep-farming, excessive rents,
exorbitant fines, consolidation of small holdings into large farms,
decay of houses and farm-buildings, formation of deer-parks, and,
more rarely, enclosure of open-field arable farms. Here are to be
found fierce denunciations of the “caterpillars of the common-
weal,”’? who “ join lordship to lordship, manor to manor, farm to
farm, land to land, pasture to pasture,” and gather many thousands
of acres of ground “ together within one pale or hedge”’ ; or of the
unchristian landlords, who ‘“‘ rack and stretch out the rents of
their lands,’ taking ‘‘ unreasonable fines,” “ setting their pore
tenants so straitely uppon the tenter hookes as no man can lyve
on them ” ;2 or of the insatiable ‘‘ cormorants ” who “ let two or
three tenantries unto one man,” “ take in their commons ”’ till not
so much as a garden ground is safe, and make “ parks or pastures
of whole parishes’’;+ or of the “ unreasonable covitous persones
whiche doth encroche daily many ffermes more than they can be
able to occupye or mainteyne with tilth for corne as hath been used
in tymes past, forasmoche as divers of them hath obteyned and
encroched into their handes, X, XII, XIV, or XVI fermes in oon
mannes hand attons’’;> or of the “ ambicious suttletie ’’ of those

1 “ Nowe-a-dayes,”’ Ballads from MSS., ed. F. J. Furnivall (Publications of
the Ballad Society, vol. i. p. 97, 1868).

2? Thomas Becon, Jewel of Joy (Parker Society, Becon’s Works, p. 432).

3 Philip Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses (1583), (New Shakespeare Society,
p. 116).

4 William Tyndale, Doctrinal Treatises (Parker Society, p. 201).
5 Petition to Henry VIII., quoted in Ballads from MSS., vol. i. p. 101.

CONDEMNATION OF ENCLOSURES 63

who make ‘one fearme of two or three,’ and even sometimes
“bringe VI to one”; or of the greed of “ step-lords,’’ like the
‘rich franklings,” 1 who
** Occupyinge a dosen men’s lyvyngis
Take all in their owne hondes alone.”
Nor do the innocent causes of much of the trouble escape attack ;
sheep “‘ that were wont to be so myke and tame, and so smal eaters,
now, as I heare saie, be become so greate devowerers, and so wylde,
that they eate up and swallow down the very men themselfes,” *
drive “husbandry ” out of the country, and thrust “ Christian
labourers ”’ off the land.
*“Sheepe have eate up our medows and our downes,

Our corne, our wood, whole villages and townes ;

Yea, they have eate up many wealthy men,

Besides widowes and orphane childeren ;

Besides our statutes and our Iron Lawes,

Which they have swallowed down into their maws :—

Till now I thought the proverbe did but jest,

Which said a blacke sheepe was a biting beast.” *
Enclosers were condemned by preachers as “‘ guilty before God of
the sin in the text—‘ they have sold the righteous for silver and the
poor for a pair of shoes.’”” A playwright like Massinger did not
draw entirely on his imagination, but expressed the feeling of the
day when he painted his portrait of a Sir Giles Overreach, insensible
to pity for his victims and justly called :

‘“* Extortioner, Tyrant, Cormorant, or Intruder

On my poor neighbour’s right, or grand Incloser
Of what was common to my private use.” 4

¢

In the passion for sheep and hedges, which changed “ merrie
England” into “sighing or sorrowful England,’ men saw the
fulfilment of the prophecy “‘ Horne and Thorne shall make England
forlorne.”’ > Superstitions enforced the popular judgment, and
legend doomed “‘ emparkers,”’ like Sir John Townley, to haunt the
solitudes they had created, uttering bitter cries of unavailing

remorse.

1**Rede me and be nott Wrothe.” By William Roy (1527), Arber’s
Reprints, 28.

2 More’s Utopia, bk. i. (Ralph Robynson’s Translation), ed. Lupton, p. 51.

3 Bastard’s Chrestoleros (1598), bk. iv. Epigram 20.

4A New Way to pay Old Debts, Act. iv. Se. 1.

5 Francis Trigge, Humble Petition of Two Sisters: the Church and the Com-
monwealth (1604).

64 FARMING FOR PROFIT

It was easy for popular preachers and pamphleteers to excite
popular passion against the “greedy gulls’? and “ insatiable
cormorants,’ who advocated and practised enclosures, and to
denounce the agricultural tendencies of Tudor times as solely
guided by selfish greed. But there are practical and broader sides
to the question. When once land was regarded as an important
asset in the wealth of the nation, national interests demanded that
it should be utilised to the greatest possible advantage. Without
enclosures, the soil could not be used for the purposes to which it
was best adapted, or its resources fully developed. If money was
to be made out of land, or if its full productive power was to be
realised, it was individual enterprise alone that could make or
realise either. Under the open-field system one man’s idleness
might cripple the industry of twenty: only on enclosed farms,
separately occupied, could men secure the full fruit of their enter-
prise. This fact had slowly revealed itself during the last two
centuries. To exchange intermixed lands, to consolidate compact
holdings, and fence them off in separate occupation, had long been
the aim both of landlords and tenant-farmers. Few practical
men would have disputed the truth of Fuller’s statement: “‘ The
poor man who is monarch of but one enclosed acre will receive
more profit from it than from his share of many acres in common
with others.”

Tudor agriculturists went further in their zeal for farming pro-
gress. They saw that a small enclosed plot of 15 acres could be
used with less advantage than a large enclosure of 150 acres which
enabled the tenant to invest money in the land, carry more stock,
provide his cattle with more winter food, and, if the climate per-
mitted, adopt convertible husbandry. This was recognised both
by landowners and farmers of the progressive school, and the
increased size even of arable farms continues to be a feature in
sixteenth century changes. For successful sheep-farming, a large
stretch of land, held in individual occupation, was still more
essential. From this point cf view the untilled common wastes
were unprofitable. Whether land was enclosed for tillage or as sheep
runs, its productiveness was increased by enclosure. Finally, the
natural fertility of arable land on open unenclosed farms was
becoming exhausted. The system was one of taking much from
the land and putting little back. The soil, lightly ploughed, seldom
_ manured, often foul, was in some districts worn-out. From 1349

DRAWBACKS TO OPEN-FIELD FARMING 65

to 1485, that is, from the Black Death to the Battle of Bosworth,
its yield had declined ; its farming had deteriorated. Fitzherbert,
writing in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, notes that
useful agricultural practices had in many parts become obsolete,
that crops were smaller, and methods of husbandry more slovenly.
The fall in rentals had been general. But it was on demesne lands,
or on enclosed farms, that the fall in rents had been least. These
were the lands which were in the best condition, because on them
most manure had been expended. Open-field farmers commanded
little or no manure for their arable land, and were practically
dependent on sheep for fertilising the soil. Yet in winter,
animals, reduced to the lowest possible number, barely sur-
vived on straw and tree-loppings. The miserable condition of
live-stock on open-field farms and commons exposed the sheep to
the scab and the rot, and the cattle to the murrain. It was no
uncommon spectacle to see the head of an ox impaled on a stake
by the highway, as a warning that the township was infected.
Agriculturists might with good reason plead that the changes
which they advocated were justified, if not necessitated, by the
progress of farming. They hoped that even open-field farmers
might themselves recognise the advantages of enclosure, and would
agree to consolidate their intermixed holdings and extinguish their
reciprocal rights of common. Fitzherbert in his Book of Husbandry
argues strongly in favour of enclosures, and especially insists on
their advantages in keeping live-stock, which, he says, thrive best
and cost least on enclosed land. If a farmer has only a twenty
years’ lease of his land, it will pay him to go to the expense of
fencing off his land in separate parcels with hedges and ditches.
Common-field farmers have to pay 2d. a quarter for each head of
cattle, and 1d. a quarter for each head of swine, under the care of
the common herdsman and swineherd. If they wish to thrive,
each must keep a shepherd of his own. The hire of the herdsman
and the swineherd, together with the wages and board of the
shepherd, and the cost of hurdles and stakes put together, double
the rent. If a farmer encloses, he may have to pay three times
this annual cost in one year; but he has no further expense.
‘““Than hathe he euery fyelde in seueraltie: and by the assente
of the lordes and the tenauntes euery neyghbour may exchaunge
landes with other. And than shall his farme be twyse so good in
proffite to the tenaunte as it was before, and as muche lande kepte
E

66 FARMING FOR PROFIT

in tyllage, and than shall not the ryche man ouer-eate the poore
man with his cattell, and the fourth parte of haye and strawe shail
serue his cattell better in a pasture than foure tymes so muche
will dooe in a house, and less attendaunce, and better the cattell
shall lyke, and it is the chiefest sauegarde for corne bothe daye
and nyght that may be.” To the same effect wrote Tusser in the
comparison between ‘“‘ champion” (or open-field) ‘‘ and severall ”
(or enclosed) in his Five Hundreth Good Pointes of Good Husbandrie
(1573).
‘More profit is quieter found,
(Where pastures in severall bee);

Of one seelie aker of ground
Than champion maketh of three.

The t’one is commended for grain,

Yet bread made of beanes they doo eate ;
The t’other for one loafe have twaine

Of mastlin, of rie, or of wheate.”

But the agriculturists did not anticipate that one shepherd, with
his dog, his crook, shears, and tar-box, might take the place of
many ploughmen. They had not reckoned on the strength of the
new commercial spirit, and of the impulse which it gave to large
grazing farms. The area of land actually returned as enclosed and
converted to pasture was relatively small. It has been calculated
that, during a period of nearly two centuries,—that is, from 1455
to 1637,—the total acreage enclosed and converted did not exceed
750,000 acres, and that the total number of persons thrown out of
work was not greater than 35,0001. At the present day, four
million acres of arable land may in fifteen years be converted into
pasture without calling the serious attention of a single statesman

1 Mr. Gay’s estimate of the total area affected between the years 1455 and
1607 is 516,673 acres (“‘Inclosures in England” in Quarterly Journal of
Economics, vol. xvii. pp. 576-97). He admits that this is probably an under-
estimate. The figure given in the text is the calculation made by the Rev.
A. H. Johnson in The Disappearance of the Small Landowner (1909), pp. 48, 58.

On the other hand, a contemporary writer (Certayne causes gathered
together, Four Supplications, E.E.T.S. extra series xiii., pp. 101-2) estimates that
at that time (1551) 50,000 ploughs had been put down, and that each plough
not only maintained six persons, but provided food in addition for 7} persons.
In other words, upwards of 650,000 persons lost their means of support. This
is an obvious exaggeration.

More than two-thirds of the area affected lay in the Midland counties
(‘‘in umbelico regni,’”’ as Rous writes), and especially in Northamptonshire,
Oxfordshire, Bucks, Warwick, Berkshire, Leicestershire, Bedfordshire, and
Huntingdonshire. The northern and southern counties were almost untouched.
In the west, Gloucestershire, and in the east, Norfolk, were the only districts
seriously affected.

RURAL DEPOPULATION 67

to the consequent loss of employment and rural depopulation. But
small though the acreage may have been, it was considerable in
proportion to the cultivated area, and the suffering was undeniably
great. The distress was aggravated by the disbanding of the great
retinues which had been maintained in feudal households, and by
the consequent disturbance of the labour market. It was still
more intensified by the suppression of the monasteries (1536-42).
Not only were a very large number of dependents deprived of their
livelihood, but enclosures on the old ecclesiastical estates were
carried out with peculiar harshness. The new owners among whom
the monastic lands were distributed, bound by no sentimental tie
to the existing tenants, claimed that the royal grant annulled all
titles derived from the previous owners, entered on their possessions
as though they were vacant of leaseholders or copyholders, and
enclosed the land for sheep-runs. The doggerel ballad, ‘‘ Vox
Populi, Vox Dei’”’ (1549),1 laments the consequences of the change
of ownership :

“We have shut away all cloisters,
But still we keep extortioners :
We have taken their lands for their abuse,
But we have converted them to a worse use.”’

Voluntary agreements for the valuation and commutation of
rights of common were often entered into between tenants and
landowners, and bargains were struck on equitable terms. Instances
like that given in the following extract from Kennet’s Parochial
Antiquities? might be indefinitely multiplied: ‘‘ The said Edmund
Rede, Esquire granted and confirmed to Thomas Billyngdon one close
in Adyngrave, in consideration whereof the said Thomas Billyngdon
quitted and resigned his right to the free pasturage of four oxen to
feed with the cattle of the said Edmund Rede and all right to any
common in the said pasture or inlandys of the said Edmund.”
Here in 1437 was the principle of commutation of rights of common
accepted and enforced by private contract. In other cases a
semblance of agreement may have been secured by threats. But
justice was not always perverted in the interests of landlords.
Attempted acts of oppression were frequently checked by the
courts of law. As an instance may be quoted the proposed en-
closure of the common-fields at Welcombe, uear Stratford-on-

1 Ballads from MSS. ll. 538-41. The spelling is modernized. (Publication
of the Ballad Society, vol. i. p. 139.)

2 Vol. ii. 324.

68 FARMING FOR PROFIT

Avon.!1 The example is the more interesting because it reveals one
of the rare appearances of William Shakespeare in public life. In
1614 William Combe, of Stratford-on-Avon, the Crown tenant of
the ‘‘ College,” wished to withdraw his arable land from the open-
field farm of Welcombe, enclose it, and lay it down to pasture. He
also wished to enclose so much of the ancient greensward or pasture
as his rights of pasturage represented. To his scheme he had
obtained the consent of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, as representative
of the Crown, and the active co-operation of the Chancellor’s
steward. Shakespeare, however, was in a position to be a formidable
opponent, for he not only owned land adjoining, but also held the
unexpired term of a lease of half the tithes of the open-fields. y But
a deed, dated October 28, 1614, secured him from any loss of tithe
through the conversion of tillage into pasture, and his consent to
the enclosure was obtained. Combe had now only to deal with
the Corporation of Stratford, who offered a strenuous resistance.
Strong language did not move them ; in the Corporation MS. the
witnesses are duly noted who heard him call them ‘‘ Purtan knaves,”’
‘“‘ doggs and curres.”” Tempting offers were refused, though Combe
proposed to compensate them in more than the value of the tithe,
to undertake the perpetual repair of the highways passing over
the land, and to increase the value of the rights of freeholders and
tenants by waiving part of his claim to turn out sheep and cattle
on the commons. Then Combe took matters into his own hands,
and prepared to enclose his land by surrounding it with a ditch.
This brought the dispute to a crisis. Not apparently without the
knowledge of the Town Clerk, the townspeople filled in the ditch.
A breach of the peace seemed imminent. The matter was, there-
fore, referred to the law-courts, and at Warwick Assizes, on March
27, 1615, Lord Chief Justice Coke made an order that “* noe inclosure
shalbe made within the parish of Stratforde.”’ The Dingles, which
formed part of the common-fields of Welcombe, remain uninclosed
to this day.

Instances of the tyrannical use of power could also be quoted.
The Tudor age was rough, and might was sometimes right. Sir
Thomas More in his Utopia (1516) paints this side to the picture,
when he speaks of “‘ husbandmen . . . thrust owte of their owne, or
els by coveyne and fraude or by vyolent oppression they be put

1 Shakespeare and the Enclosure of Common Fields at Welcombe, edited by
C. M. Ingleby (1885).

METHODS OF CONSOLIDATING ESTATES 69

besydes it, or by wronges and injuries they be so weried that they
be compelled to sell all.”’ If a small freeholder or copyholder proved
obstinate, the proceedings of Sir Giles Overreach, in A New Way
to Pay Old Debts (Act ii. Sc. 1), may illustrate the methods by which
a Naboth’s vineyard, even when it belonged to a manorial lord,
might be appropriated by a wealthy capitalist :

‘“Tll therefore buy some cottage near his manor,
Which done, I'll make my men break ope his fences,
Ride o’er his standing corn, and in the night
Set fire on his barns, or break his cattle’s legs,
These trespasses draw on suits, and suits expenses
Which I can spare, but will soon beggar him.

When I have harried him thus two or three year,
Though he sue in formd pauperis, in spite
Of all his thrift and care he'll grow behindhand.

Then, with the favour of my man at law,

I will pretend some title: want will force him
To put it to arbitrement. Then if he sell

For half the value he shall have ready money,
And I possess his land.”

Considerations of mutual advantage, equitable bargains, fair pur-
chase, superior force, legal chicanery, threats and bullying, were
all at work to hasten the change to the individual occupation of
land, and the consolidation of separate holdings. If copyholders
or commoners appealed to the law-courts, matters, no doubt, some-
times ended as they were friended. ‘‘ Handy-dandy ” was in the
Middle Ages a proverbial expression for the covert bribe offered by
a suitor, and the occasional perversion of justice is enshrined in the
Latin jingle: Jus sine jure datur, si nummus in aure loquatur.
Illegal evictions are not included among the grievances alleged by
the leaders in any of the risings of the peasantry which marked
the Tudor period. Their absence from these lists justify the con-
clusion that open illegality was at least rare. But the law itself
gave landowners abundant opportunities of regaining possession of
the land. Leaseholders for a term of years or for lives had no legal
claim to a renewal of their leases, when the term of years had
expired or the last life had dropped. Rents might then be raised
to an exorbitant sum or extravagant fines exacted, and, unless the
tenant was prepared to pay the increased charge, he must surrender
his holding. Cottagers or squatters on the waste could rarely
show any legal claim to the occupation of land, and the tenancy of
a cottage to which rights of common attached could be practically
determined by enhancing the rent. Copyholders were, in all

70 FARMING FOR PROFIT

probability, almost equally insecure in their holdings. So long as
they were in possession, the court roll was evidence of the incidents
of their tenure. But the law was still vague as to rights of suc-
cession to copyholds. It may be doubted whether copyholds of
inheritance were yet known, and it is reasonably certain that the
normal copyhold was for a term of years or for lives. At the
expiration of the term of years or of the last life, normal copy-
holders were at the mercy of the lord. Even if copyholds of inheri-
tance were recognised by lawyers in the sixteenth century, they
were still insecure. Their titles must often have been incapable
of legal proof ; they might be forfeited by some real or technical
breach of custom ; their renewal was subject to the payment of
fines on admittance, which might, where no manorial custom fixed
the sum, be arbitrary in amount. It was not till the close of the
eighteenth century that the law fixed the limits of a reasonable
fine, and, if the fines were arbitrary, the landlord had a weapon
with which even copyholds of inheritance, as understood by modern
lawyers, might be determined. It is impossible to doubt that
exorbitant rents and excessive fines, of which the peasant leaders,
preachers, and pamphleteers so bitterly complain, were sometimes
used to dispossess leaseholders and copyholders. The powers were
legal ; but their exercise often worked injustice. Yet it should be
remembered, on the other side, that the raising of rents or the
enhancing of fines, whenever the opportunity occurred, were the
only means of adjusting the landlord’s income to the great rise in
the prices of agricultural produce. In the Compendious or Briefe
Examination+ the Knight puts the landlord’s case. ‘In all my
life time,”’ he says, ‘‘I looke not that the thirde part of my lande shall
come to my dispocition that I may enhaunce the rent of the same,
but it shalbe in mens holdinges either by lease or by copie graunted
before my time. . . . We cannot rayse all our wares as youe maye
yours.” Rents, based on the commutation of labour services at a
fixed annual sum in the fourteenth century did not represent the
annual value of the land in 1550. Nor were fines for renewal or on

1 The Compendious or briefe Examination of certayne ordinary complaints
of divers of our countrymen in these our dayes was printed in 1581, and the
authorship is attributed to ““W. 8S. Gentleman.” But Miss Lamond dis-
covered, edited, and published (1893) an edition from a MS. probably written
in 1549. She gives reasons for assigning its authorship to John Hales.
“W. 5S.” may have been William Stafford (1554-1612); but that he was not
the writer appears to have been conclusively proved.

STRONG POSITION OF OPEN-FIELD FARMERS 71

admittance always excessive. Roger Wilbraham, of Delamere in
Cheshire, about the middle of the seventeenth century, left behind
him instructions for his heir: ‘‘ It will be expected of my heir that
he deale no worse with tenants than I have done. And for his
directions I have set down ye yearly values according to which I
deale and wold have him to deale with the tenants. My rule in
leasing is to take for a fine from ancient tenants: 8 years’ value
for 3 lives, 5 years’ value to add 2 lives to 1, 2 years’ value to add 1
life to 2, 1 year’s value to change a life, or more if there is any great
disparity in years betwixt the lives.’ When, therefore, rents were
raised or fines enhanced, the landlord was not always trying to dis-
possess his tenant. As often as not, he was claiming his proper
share of the tenant’s ‘‘ unearned increment.”

Against these weapons of the law the cultivators of the old
home-farms and of the assart lands were practically defenceless.
It is therefore natural to suppose that they were the principal
sufferers by the enclosing movement. In their case enclosures did
not of necessity involve any breach of the old or new law.
Even the provisions of the Tudor legislation were not infringed,
unless the land, thus cleared of its cultivators, was so used as to
throw any number of holdings together into the hands of one man,
to “decay ’’ farm-buildings or houses, to convert tillage into
pasture, and so put down ploughs, or to carry an illegal number
of sheep. But open-field farmers were in a stronger position. The
common rights, which each partner in the association enjoyed over
the whole cultivated area of the village-farm, could only be ex-
tinguished by agreement, real or enforced, among the commoners.
Nor was this consent the only obstacle to enclosure which the
system presented. The intermixture of the strips is recognised as
a protection against enclosure by the ablest of the sixteenth century
writers on the subject. In the Compendious or Briefe Examination
both the Doctor and the Husbandman agree as to the difficulties
which these two features of the open-field system threw in the way
of any general enclosure. The same points are insisted upon by
eighteenth century writers. It is not, of course, asserted that the
difficulties of enclosing open-field farms were insuperable. Ever
since the thirteenth century, village farms had been broken up,
both by large landowners and comparatively small freeholders.

1 Quoted from the Wilbraham MSS. at Delamere by F. R. Twemlow in The
Twemlows : their Wives, and their Homes (1910), p. 17.

72 FARMING FOR PROFIT

But, before the enclosure acts of the eighteenth century, it was a
slow and piecemeal process, by which the principal landlord, or
some freeholder who was a partner in the farm, gradually con-
solidated in his own hands the whole or a part of the commonable
cultivated land, enclosed it, and freed it from common rights. No
doubt the enclosure of uncultivated wastes injured the tenants
of village farms, because it restricted the area of rough pasture
grazed by their live-stock. Enclosures of this kind, carried out
without leaving a sufficiency of common pasture, were the chief
grievance of the peasantry in Kett’s rebellion in Norfolk. In
this connection the re-enactment by Edward VI. of the statutes
of Merton and Westminster,! is significant. But the meaning is
obscure. It may have been intended to increase the amount of
tillage by bringing new land under the plough in exchange for that
which had been laid down to grass. Except through the attack
upon their pasture commons, it is reasonable to conclude that open-
field farmers escaped the storm of sixteenth century enclosures
more lightly than the less protected cultivators of demesnes and
‘“assart’’ lands. This seems to have been the case. Bitter com-
plaints were made against the enclosure of open-fields. But the
outery was practically confined to the corn-growing counties of the
Midlands, which throughout the whole period were seething with
discontent and insurrection. Yet even here, with the exception of
Leicestershire, the enclosing movement cannot have, to any great
extent, succeeded, since these are the very counties which, in the
eighteenth century, still contained the largest proportion of “‘ cham-
pion ”’ or open land.

Advanced free-traders might agree with Raleigh that England,
like Holland, could be wholly supplied with grain from abroad
without troubling the people with tillage. Others of a less theo-
retical turn of mind looked no further than the immediate distress
which the abandonment of tillage produced. Hf the enclosing
movement had been accompanied by a large extension of arable
farming, the market for agricultural labour might have been so
enlarged as substantially to relieve agrarian distress. But the
extension of pasture and the substitution of a shepherd and his
dog for the ploughmen and their teams only increased the scarcity
of employment. Tenant-farmers lost their leaseholds; copy-
holders were dispossessed of their holdings ; squatters and cottagers,

13 and 4 Edward VI. c. 3. (See p. 38.)

DISTRESS IN RURAL DISTRICTS 73

who had eked out their harvest earnings by the produce of the
live-stock which they maintained on the commons, were ruined ;
servants in husbandry and labourers for weekly wages were thrown
out of work. The high prices of necessaries, combined with the loss
of commons, the ravages of the murrain, and a succession of dry
summers, had driven many small cultivators over the narrow
border-line which separated them from starvation. Rents rose
exorbitantly till, for farmers at rack-rent, existence became a
misery. There was an ominous growth of middlemen, “ lease-
mongers, who take groundes by lease to the entente to lette them
againe for double and tripple the rente,’! and battened on the
land-hunger of the people. Legislators were bewildered by currency
questions, and violent changes in the standard purity of the gold
and silver coinage aggravated the distress by raising or lowering
prices. As gold and silver poured into the Old World from America,
prices rose throughout Europe. The rise was in England attributed
to every cause other than the cheapening of the precious metals.
While from one or the other of these causes the purchasing power
of wages rapidly diminished, their nominal value remained station-
ary, and labourers were forced to accept the statutory rates.

It was on those agriculturists who were unwilling or unable to
adapt themselves to the times that the blow fell with the greatest
severity. The Husbandman in the Compendious Examination knew
several of his neighbours who had “ turned ether part or all theire
arable grounde into pasture, and therby have wexed verie Rich
men.” These were the men of whom Harrison and Sir Thomas
Smith speak as “coming to such wealth that they are able and
do daily buy lands of unthrifty gentlemen and make .. . their
sons gentlemen.”’ But the Husbandman himself, having “ enclosed
litle or nothinge of my grownd, could never be able to make up
my lorde’s rent, weare it not for a litle brede of neate, shepe, swine,
gese and hens.” Hence it is that, while Latimer laments the
degradation of small yeomen who, like his father, had farms of
“ three to four pounds a year at the uttermost,” Harrison describes
the rise of substantial farmers and of the middle classes, and their
improved standard of living. The distribution of wealth was
becoming more and more unequal; the problem of poverty was
acquiring a new significance. In the growing struggle for existence

1 Robert Crowley’s Way to Wealth (1550). See also his EHpigrams “ of
Leasemongars ”’ and “of Rent raysers.”’

74 FARMING FOR PROFIT

it was possible for men, who were neither infirm nor idle, to lose
their footing. Voluntary almsgiving was tried and proved inade-
quate. Gradually and cautiously the legislators of the reign of
Elizabeth were forced to apply the principle of compulsory pro-
vision for the relief of the necessitous.1 Previous legislation, in
dealing with the impotent poor, had outlined the systems of local
liability and of settlement which were adopted in the later poor-
laws; but it had been mainly concerned with the suppression of
those persons who were styled idle rogues and vagabonds. The
object explains, though to modern ideas it cannot justify, the
harshness of the law. Able-bodied men and women, who were
willing to work but had lost their livelihood, were unknown to the
legislators who had sketched the first poor-laws for the relief of
the impotent poor and the punishment of sturdy beggars (validi
mendicantes). Our ancestors did not discriminate closely between
the different sources of poverty. To them, as is stated in the
preamble to the statute of Henry VIII. “ ydlenes” was the
‘“mother and rote of all vyces.” The “great and excessive
nombres” of idle rogues and vagabonds were a crying evil. To
this class belonged the men who committed “ contynuall theftes,
murders, and other haynous offences, which displeased God,
damaged the King’s subjects, and disturbed the common weal of
the realm.” Apart from the committal of serious crime, the mass
of idle vagrants was in country districts a nuisance and a danger.
The kidnapping of children was not uncommon. Housewives were
robbed of their linen, and their pots and pans, or terrified by threats
of violence into parting with their money. Horses were stolen
from their paddocks, or, still more easily, from the open-field balks
on which they were tethered; pigs were taken from their styes,
chickens and eggs from the henroosts. Men and women, as they
- returned ftom markets, were waylaid by sturdy ruffians. Shops,
booths, and stalls were pilfered of their contents. Tippling-houses
were converted into receivers’ dens for stolen goods. The com-
parative leniency of the laws of Henry VII. had failed ; therefore
the evil must be stamped out with a severity which was not only
unsentimental but ferocious.

Here the interesting point is whether the ranks of idle rogues

1 See Appendix II., The Poor Laws, 1601-1834.

2 1530-1 (22 Henry VIII. c. 12) supplemented in 1536 by 27 Henry VIII.
e. 25.

UNEMPLOYED LABOUR 75

were to any large extent swollen by agriculturists, driven to want
and desperation by the loss of their holdings. The sturdy beggars,
against whom Richard II. had legislated, had not the excuse of
want of employment. They consisted, partly of disbanded soldiers
who had so long followed the trade of war that they knew no
other ; partly of men who had suffered that general moral deteriora-
tion which often resulted from great catastrophes like the successive
visitations of the ‘“‘ Black Death.” In the fifteenth century, the
close of the French war and of the Wars of the Roses again recruited
the ranks of idle poverty and crime. To them were added, at a
later date, the disbanded retinues of great nobles, “the great
flock or train,” to quote More’s Utopia, “of idle and loitering
serving-men, which never learned any craft whereby to get their
living.”’ Finally, the suppression of the monasteries displaced and
threw upon the world a large number of dependents, many of whom,
from inclination or necessity, joined the army of sturdy beggars.
Disbanded soldiers, discharged serving-men, and dismissed depend-
ents of monastic institutions account for a formidable total of
unemployed labour, without the addition of clothiers out of work
or displaced agriculturists. But the evidence of More’s Utopia
cannot be ignored. The passage is familiar + in which he speaks
of the husbandmen “ thrust owte of their owne’”’ by enclosures ;
compelled to “ trudge out of their knouen and accustomed howses ”’ ;
driven to a forced sale of their “ housholde stuffe”? and “ con-
strayned to sell it for a thyng of nought.” ‘‘ And when they have,
wanderynge about, sone spent that, what can they els do but
steale, and then justelye, God wote, be hanged, or els go about a
beggyng? And yet then also they be cast in prison as vagaboundes,
because they go about and worke not; whom no man will set a
worke, though they never so willingly offer them selfes therto.”
More’s eloquent appeal may have produced effect. In the year
after the publication of Utopia, the first and most important Com-
mission was issued (1517-19) to enquire into the progress and results
of enclosures in the twenty-four counties principally affected. The
Returns of the Commissioners in Chancery are admittedly imperfect.
But they justify the conclusion? that More’s picture, though true

1 Utopia, bk. i., ed. Lupton, pp. 53-4.

* Hypothetical tables based on these returns have been constructed by
Mr. Gay, showing that the total number of persons displaced by enclosures

during the period 1485-1517 did not much exceed 6931. See Johnson’s
Disappearance of the Small Landowner, p. 58.

76 FARMING FOR PROFIT

in particular instances, is as a general description of rural conditions
too highly coloured. Dispossessed agriculturists undoubtedly con-
tributed some proportion of the class which the Government grouped
under the heading of idle rogues. Contemporary writers imply
that the proportion was large: modern research, based on con-
temporary enquiries and returns, suggests that it was relatively
small. The evidence seems insufficient for a decision. In coping
with a real evil, the Government attempted no classification. The
innocent suffered with the guilty, and men and women, whether
many or few, who had lost their means of livelihood and were
willing to work, were the victims of severe punishment designed
for the class of professional vagabonds.

Something is known of the degrees, practices, and jargon of the
Elizabethan fraternity of vagabonds. Awdelay and Harman?
describe the “‘ Abraham man,” or “ poor Tom,” bare-legged and
bare-armed, pretending madness; the “‘ Upright man”’ with his staff,
and the “ Ruffler ’ with his weapon ; the “ Fraters,’’ Pedlars, and
Tinkards ; the “ priggars of Prauncers,” or horse-stealers, in their
leather jerkins; the ‘“ Counterfet Cranke,” feigning the falling sick-
ness, with a piece of white soap in his mouth which made him foam
like a boar: the “ Palliards,’’ with their patched cloaks, and self-
inflicted sores or wounds; and many others of the twenty-three
varieties, male and female, of the professional beggar. But even
Harman seldom enquired into their previous life. Some, like the
‘“* Ruffler,” had either “ serued in the warres or bene a seruinge
man’’; others, like the “ Uprights,’ have been “ serueing men,
artificers, and laboryng men traded up to husbandry.” The
‘“‘ wild Roge ’”’ was a “ begger by enheritance—his Grandfather was
a begger, his father was one, and he must nedes be one by good
reason.” Few allusions can be gleaned from Shakespeare’s writings
to the agricultural changes which were taking place around him.
But when we pass from the movement itself to some of the results
which it helped to produce, his references are many and clear. The
mass of “‘ vagrom men” was a real social danger which exercised
the wits of wiser men than Dogberry.?

1 The Fraternity of Vacabondes, by John Awdeley (1561) and A Caveat or
Warening for Commen Curseters, by Thomas Harman (1567-8).
2 Many of the types of beggars appear in Shakespeare’s pages. There is
Harman’s “ Ruffler,”’ ‘“‘ the worthiest of this unruly rablement ” :
“*. , fit to bandy with thy lawless sons

To ruffle in the commonwealth of Rome.”
(Tit. Andr. Acti. Se. 1, 11. 312-3.)

SHAKESPEARE’S “ VAGROM MEN ” i

There is the “ pedlar,” the aristocracy of the profession, a clever plausible
rascal like Autolycus. ‘‘ The droncken tyncker ”’ is represented by Christopher
Sly—‘‘ by birth a pedlar . . . by present profession a tinker ’’—drunk on
the heath, and in debt for ale to Marian Hacket (Tam. Sh. Ind. ii. ll. 19-22).
There is the “ prygger”’ or “ prygman,” who ‘haunts wakes, fairs, and
bear-baitings ” (Wint. Tale, Act iv. Se. 2,1. 109). There is Awdeley’s “‘ chop-
logyke,”’ who gives ‘‘ XX wordes for one,”’ to whom Capulet likens his daughter
Juliet (Rom. and Jul. Act iii. Se. 5, 1. 150). There is Harman’s ‘‘ Rogue,”
or “‘ Wild Rogue,”’ in the “‘ rogue forlorn,” who shares the hovel and the straw
with King Lear and the swine (Lear, Act iv. Se. 7, 1. 39). Edgar, disguised
as a madman and calling himself “‘ poor Tom” (Lear, Act iii. Se. 4, 1. 57), is
Awdeley’s ‘‘ Abraham man,” who “‘ nameth himselfe ‘ poore Tom.’.. Whipped
from tithing to tithing,” he had only received the punishment to which an
Elizabethan statute (39 Eliz. c. 4) sentenced ‘“‘ all fencers, bearwards, common
players, and minstrels ; all jugglers, tinkers and petty chapmen,”’ and other
vagrants who were adjudged to be rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars.

CHAPTER IV.

THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH.

Paternal despotism: restoration of the purity of the coinage; a definite
commercial policy: revival of the wool trade: new era of prosperity
among landed gentry and occupiers of land: a time of adversity for small
landowners and wage-earning labourers: Statute of Apprentices ; hiring
fairs; growth of agricultural literature: Fitzherbert and Tusser: their
picture of Tudor farming : defects of the open-field system : experience of
the value of enclosures; improvement in farming: Barnaby Googe ;
Sir Hugh Plat: progress in the art of gardening.

THE reign of Elizabeth marks a definite stage in English history.
The mediaeval organisation of society, together with its trade
guilds and manorial system of farming, had broken down. Out of
the confusion order might be evolved by a paternal despotism.
The Queen’s advisers, with strong practical sagacity, set themselves
to the task. They sate loosely to theories and rode no principles
to death. But so firmly did they lay their foundations, that parts
of their structure lasted until the nineteenth centyry. National con-
trol displaced local control. The central power gathered strength: it
directed the economic interests of the nation ; it regulated industrial
relations ; through its legislation and administration it fostered the
development of national resources.

The restoration of the standard purity and weight of the coinage
was resolutely taken in hand. Its debasement had been the cause
of much of the economic distress in previous reigns; credit was
ruined, and the treasury bankrupt. The debased, sweated, and
clipped silver coinage was called in, and new coins were issued. .As
silver flowed into the country from the New World, the amount of
money in circulation increased. More capital was available in a
handy form, and, when legitimate interest ceased to be confused
with usury, more people could borrow it on reasonable terms. The
way was thus paved for a new era of commercial prosperity.

In mediaeval times the whole external trade of the country had

DEFINITE COMMERCIAL POLICY 79

been in the hands of foreigners. Elizabeth followed and developed
the commercial policy of England, which first assumed a deliberate
continuous shape under Henry VII. Foreign traders were dis-
couraged, and English merchants favoured. The Hanseatic League
lost the last of its privileges; the Venetian fleet came to England
less and less frequently, and at last ceased altogether to fly its
flag in the Channel. The import of manufactured goods was
checked. The export of raw material and of English sheep was
narrowly restricted, though long wool, as the staple of a great trade,
was still sent abroad freely. The Government realised to the full
all the abuses of patents and monopolies ; but they did not hesitate
to grant both privileges in order to stimulate native. enterprise.
Companies were formed with exclusive rights of trading in par-
ticular countries. The oldest and most powerful of these Companies,
the Merchant Adventurers, obtained a royal charter in 1564. The
Muscovite, Levant or Turkey, Eastland or Baltic, and Guinea or
African Companies were formed to push English trade in foreign
parts. In 1600 the East India Company was chartered. The
mercantile marine was encouraged by fishery laws, which gave
English fishermen a monopoly in the sale of fish. Men who argued
that abstinence from meat at certain seasons was good for the
soul’s health risked the stake or the rack; but, for the sake of
multiplying seamen, the Government did not hesitate to ordain
fast-days on which only fish was to be eaten.t_ To foster the home
manufacture of cloth, it was made a penal offence for any person
over the age of six not to wear on Sundays and holy days a cap
made of English cloth. Stimulated by such methods, trade throve
apace, and English goods were carried in English-built ships, owned
by Englishmen, and manned by English seamen. While foreign
merchants were discouraged, foreign craftsmen, especially religious
refugees from France or Flanders, were welcomed as settlers,
bringing with them their skill in manufacturing paper, lace, silk,
parchments, light woollens, hosiery, fustians, satins, thread, needles,
and in other arts and industries.

The English wool trade was restored to more than its former

1 The rule of eating fish twice a week was continued from Catholic times ;
but a third day was added by Elizabeth from motives of “ civile policy.”
** Accounting the Lent Season, and all fasting daies in the yeare, together
with Wednesday and Friday and Saturday, you shall see that the one halfe
of the yeare is ordeined to eate fish in’’ (Cogan, Haven of Helthe, ed. 1612,
p. 138).

80 THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH

prosperity. On it had long depended the commercial prosperity
of the country. John Cole, ‘‘ the rich clothier of Reading ”’ at the
end of the thirteenth century, was as famous as his fellow-craftsman,
John Winchcomb, the warlike “‘ Jack of Newbury,” became in the
days of Henry VIII. Wool was the chief source of the wealth of
traders and of the revenues of the Crown. It controlled the foreign
policy of England, supplied the sinews of our wars, built and
adorned our churches and private houses. The foreign trade con-
sisted partly in raw material, partly in semi-manufactured exports
such as worsted yarns, partly in wholly manufactured broad-cloth.
As the manufacture of worsted and cloth goods developed in this
country, the demand and consumption rapidly increased at home.
According to the purpose for which it was to be used, wool was
divided into long and short. In England, long wool was employed
mainly for worsted fabrics, but also to give strength and firmness
to cloth. Abroad, it was eagerly bought in its raw state for both
purposes. In long wool, or combing-wool, England had prac-
tically a monopoly of the markets, and to it the export trade of
raw material was almost exclusively confined. Short wool, on the
other hand, was used for broad-cloth. In its raw state it had a
formidable rival abroad in the fleeces of the Spanish merino. Only
in the manufactured state did it compete with Flemish and French
fabrics on the Continent, and often found itself unable, owing to
the excellence of merino wool and the skill of foreign weavers, to
maintain its hold on the home market. Wool-staplers were the
middlemen. They bought the wool from the breeder, sorted it
according to its quality, and sold it to the manufacturer. Dyer,
two centuries later, describes their work :

““ Nimbly, with habitual speed,
They sever lock from lock, and long and short,
And soft, and rigid, pile in several heaps.
This the dusk hatter asks ; another shines,
Tempting the clothier ; that the hosier seeks ;
The long bright lock is apt for airy stuffs :

If any wool, peculiar to our isle,

Is given by nature, ’tis the comber’s lock,

The soft, the snow-white, and the long-grown flake.”
In the long-wooled class Cotswold wool held the supremacy, with
Cirencester as its centre, though the “lustres”’ of Lincolnshire
always commanded their price. Among short-wools, Ryeland had

1 The Fleece (1757), bk. 11; ll. 83-88 and 445-47,

CHANGE IN THE QUALITY OF WOOL 8]

the pre-eminence, with Leominster as the centre of its trade.
‘“*Lemster ore’ was the equivalent of the ‘‘ golden fleece’ of the
ancients, and poets compared the wool for its fineness to the
web of the silk-worm, and for its softness to the cheek of a
maiden.

During the Tudor period, a change was passing over the wool
trade, which may have influenced the labour troubles of the period
as well as the policy of land-holders. As enclosures multiplied,
sheep were better fed, and the fleece increased in weight and length,
though it’ lost something of the fineness of its quality. In other
words, the wool was less adapted for the manufacture of broad-
cloth. The old pastures were also wearing out. During long and
cold winters, if the sheep is half-starved, the fleece may retain its
fineness, but it loses in strength. There also was a deterioration
in the quality of short wool. How far these considerations may
have influenced pasture-farming is necessarily uncertain. But it
is at least a coincidence that, in spite of the increase in the number
of sheep, there was, in the early years of the Tudor period, con-
siderable distress in the clothing trade. As the reign of Elizabeth
advanced, the great development of home manufactures provided
aremedy. The newly established Merchant Companies opened up
fresh markets abroad for English cloth. At the same time France
and the Low Countries, distracted by civil or religious wars, ceased
for the moment to be our rivals in the trade. English broad-
cloths were exported abroad in increasing quantities. The suspen-
sion of continental manufactures checked the exportation of English
long wool. But again the religious troubles of the Continent
relieved the situation. Foreign refugees settled in England, bring-
ing with them secrets in the manufacture of worsted, light woollen
stuffs, and hosiery, for all of which English wool was specially
adapted.

Thus England was once more growing prosperous, and farming
shared in the general prosperity. As the reign advanced, agri-
cultural produce rose rapidly in price. The rise no longer depended
on those fluctuations in the purity of the coinage, which had been
so frequent that no man knew the real value of the coin in which he
was paid. For a time the influx of silver had cheapened the precious
metals, diminished their purchasing power, and so created dearness.
But the great expansion of trade gradually absorbed the new

supply of silver. The later rise in agricultural prices was due to
F

82 THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH

the relative scarcity of produce, which was caused by the increased
consumption consequent on revived prosperity, by a higher standard
of living, and by a growing population. The necessary spur of
profit was thus applied to farming energies. Leaseholders for a
long term or for lives, and copyholders at fixed quit-rents had their
golden opportunity, and many of them used it to become wealthy.

Of the general prosperity of the landowning and land-renting
portion of the rural community, there is sufficient evidence. Every
man, says Harrison,! turned builder, “‘ pulled downe the old house
and set up a new after his owne devise.”’ In ten years more oak
was used for building than had been used in the previous hundred.
Country manor-houses were built not of timber, but of brick or
stone, and they were furnished with “ great provision of tapistrie,
Turkie work, pewter, brasse, fine linen and . . . costlie cupbords
of plate.’ Ordinary diet had become less simple. ‘‘ White-meats,”
—nmilk, butter, eggs, and cheese,—were despised by the wealthy, who
preferred butcher’s-meat, fish, and a “ diversitie of wild and tame
foules.” The usual fare of the country gentleman was abundant,
if not profuse. The dinner which Justice Shallow ordered for
Falstaff might be quoted as an illustration. But more direct
evidence may be produced. Harrison says that the everyday
dinner of a country gentleman was “‘ foure, five, or six dishes, when
they have but small resort.’”’ Gervase Markham in his English
Housewife gives directions for a “ great feast,” and for “a more
humble feast, or an ordinary proportion which any good man may
keep in his family, for the entertainment of his true and worthy
friend.”” The ‘“ humble feast’ includes “ sixteen dishes of meat
that are of substance and not emptie, or for shew.” To these
** sixteen full dishes,” he adds “‘ sallets, fricases, quelque choses, and
devised paste, as many dishes more, which make the full service
no lesse then two-and-thirtie dishes.” In dress, also, the country
gentry were growing more expensive, imitating the “ diversities
of jagges and changes of colours’ of the Frenchman. Already, too,
as Bishop Hall has described in his Satires, they were in the habit
of deserting their country-houses for the gaiety of towns, and the
“ unthankful swallow ” “‘ built her circled nest ” in

“The towered chimnies which should be
The windpipes of good hospitalitie.”’

ce

Of the yeomen, who included not only farming owners, but

1 Harrison, Description of England (1577), bk. ii. ec. vi. xii. XXil.

PROSPERITY OF YEOMEN 83

lessees for lives and copyholders, Harrison says that they “ com-
monlie live wealthilie, keepe good houses, and travell to get riches.” 1
Their houses were furnished with “ costlie furniture,” and they had
“learned also to garnish their cupbords with plate, their joined
beds with tapistrie and silke hangings, and their tables with carpets
and fine naperie.” Though rents had risen and were still rising,
*“‘ yet will the farmer thinke his gaines verie small toward the end
of his terme if he have not six or seven yeares rent lieing by him,
therewith to purchase a new lease, beside a faire garnish of pewter
on his cupbord, three or foure featherbeds, so manie coverlids and
carpets of tapistrie, a silver salt, a bowle for wine, and a dozzen of
spoones to furnish up the sute.”’ Old men noted these changes in
luxurious habits—‘“‘ the multitude of chimnies latelie erected,”’ ‘* the
great amendment of lodging,” and ‘‘ the exchange of vessel as of
treene platters into pewter and wodden spoones into silver or tin.”
Writing of the Cheshire yeomen in 1621, William Webb says :?
“In building and furniture of their houses, till of late years, they
used the old manner of the Saxons; for they had their fire in the
midst of the house against a hob of clay, and their oxen also under
the same roof; but within these forty years it is altogether altered,
so that they have built chimnies, and furnished other parts of their
houses accordingly. ... Touching their housekeeping it is
bountiful and comparable with any shire in the realm. And that
is to be seen at their weddings and burials, but chiefly at their
wakes, which they yearly hold . . . for this is to be understood
that they lay out seldom any money for any provision but have
it of their own, as beef, mutton, veal, pork, capons, hens, wild fowl,
and fish. They bake their own bread and brew their own drink.
To conclude, I know divers men, who are but farmers, that in their
housekeeping may compare with a lord or a baron in some countries
beyond the seas. Yea, although I named a higher degree, I were
able to justify it.’ In the Isle of Wight, Sir John Oglander ® com-
pares the state of the country at the close of Elizabeth’s reign with
that at the outbreak of the Civil War. At the former period he
says that “Money wase as plentiful in yeomens purses as nowe

in ye beste of ye genterye, and all ye genterye full of monyes and
owt of debt.”

1 Description, bk. ii. ch. v.
2 Quoted in King’s Vale Royal (1778), vol. i. pp. 30, 31.
3 Oglander Memoirs (1595-1648), p. 55.

84 THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH

The small copyholder’s house is described by Bishop Hall as
being :
“* Of one bay’s breadth, God wot, a silly cote
Whose thatched spars are furred with sluttish soote
A whole inch thick, shining like blackmoor’s brows
Through smoke that downe the headlesse barrel blows,
At his bed’s feete feeden his stalled teame,
His swine beneath, his pullen o’er the beame.”’
The outside walls were made of timber uprights and cross-beams,
forming raftered panels which were thickly daubed with clay.
But the fare which the small copyholder enjoyed was at least as
plentiful as that of landless labourers in modern times. In one of
the Elizabethan pastoral poems a noble huntsman finds shelter
under a shepherd’s roof. The food, even if something is allowed
for Arcadian licence, was good, though, in the language of the day,
it consisted mainly of “ white meat.” The guest was supplied
with the best his host could provide :

““ Browne bread, whig, bacon, curds, and milke,
Were set him on the borde.”
Fresh butcher’s meat was rarely seen on the table. Of the ““ Martyl-
mas beef,’ hung from the rafters and smoked, Andrew Borde}
thought little. If, he says, a man have a piece hanging by his side
and another in his belly, the piece which hangs by his side does
him more good, especially if it is ranmy weather. Bacon, souse, and
brawn were the peasant’s meat. ‘“* Potage,’’ Borde elsewhere writes,
‘ig not so moch used in all Crystendom as it is used in England.”
It was part of the staple diet of the peasant, whether made of the
liquor in which meat had been boiled, thickened with oatmeal, and
flavoured with chopped herbs and salt, or made from beans or
pease. Oatmeal porridge, and “fyrmente,’ made of milk and
wheat, were largely used. His bread was generally made of wheat
and rye, often mixed, as Best states,? with pease—a peck of pease
to a bushel of rye, or two pecks of pease to the same quantity of
rye and wheat. Even “ horse-bread,’”’ as Borde calls it,? made of
pease and beans, was better than the mixture of acorns which
Harrison says * was eaten in times of dearth. Yet the husbandman
had his feastings, such as “ bridales, purifications of women and
such od meetings, where it is incredible to tell what meat is

consumed and spent.”
4
1 Andrew Borde’s Dyetary (1542), ch. xvi. * Farming Book, p. 104.

3 Borde’s Dyetary, ch. xi. 4 Description, ch. vi.

NEW BUYERS OF LAND 85

The prosperity of the rural community was not universal. For
many of the smaller gentry, and for day-labourers for hire, times
were hard. Landowners, whose income was more or less stationary,
suffered from the rise in prices, accompanied, as it was, by a higher
standard of luxury. When leases fell in, or lives were renewed, or
copyholders were admitted, rents might be increased or fines
enhanced. But in an extravagant age, when country gentlemen
began to be attracted to London, such opportunities, if the tenants
belonged to a healthy stock, might come too rarely or too late.
Many owners were compelled to sell their estates. Land was often
in the market. Thus two opposing tendencies characterised the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The division of church lands
among grantees who already owned estates strengthened the landed
aristocracy, while continual sales democratised the ownership of
land. It is said that only 330 families can trace their titles to land
beyond the dissolution of the monasteries. In the two centuries
that followed, few of the gentry retained their hold on their estates,
unless they were enriched by wealthy marriages, by trade, or by
the practice of the law. The buyers generally belonged to the
rising middle classes. Harrison, in his Description of England,'
says that yeomen, “for the most part farmers to gentlemen,” by
attention to their business ‘‘ do come to great welth in somuch that
manie of them are able and doo buie the lands of unthriftie gentle-
men.” Fynes Moryson, in his Itinerary 2 (1617) notes that the Eng-
lish “doe .. daily sell their patrimonies, and the buyers (except-
ing Lawyers) are for the most part Citizens and vulgar Men.” Sir
Simon Degge? (1669), a learned lawyer, declares that in Stafford-
shire, during the past sixty years, half the land had passed into
the possession of new men. He attributes this change of ownership,
partly to divine punishment for the sacrilege of those who were
grantees of ecclesiastical property, partly to the extravagance of
the country gentry who now took pleasure in spending their estates
in London. He makes these comments on Erdeswick’s Survey
of Staffordshire, drawn up between 1593 and 1603, and goes on to
say that there were then in the county only “ three citizen owners ”’

1Bk. ii. ch. v. The Description was published in 1577. The same

passage occurs in Sir Thomas Smith’s De Republica Anglorum, bk. i. ch. xxiii.
published in 1583.

* Part III. bk. iii. ch. iii.

3 Degge’s Letter is printed as a supplement to Erdeswick’s Survey of
Staffordshire in the edition of 1717.

86 THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH

of land, and that now, in 1669, there were three Barons, four
Baronets, and twenty calling themselves Esquires who had bought
estates with money made in trade. Similar is the evidence of the
compiler of Angliae Notitia1 (1669). ‘‘ The English,” he says,
*‘ especially the Gentry are so much given to Prodigality and Sloth-
fulness that Estates are oftner spent and sold than in any other
Countrey . . . whereby it comes to passe that Cooks, Vintners,
Innkeepers, and such mean Fellows, enrich themselves and begger
and insult over the Gentry . . . not only those but Taylors, Dancing
Masters and such T'rifling Fellows arrive to that Riches and Pride,
as to ride in their Coaches, keep their Summer Houses, to be served
in Plate, etc. an insolence insupportable in other well-govern’d
Nations.”

Another class, that of labourers, suffered from the dearness of
agricultural produce, because their wages were fixed by law, and
only by slow degrees followed the upward tendency of prices. In
some respects the worst evils of the period 1485-1558 were passing
away, or were modified by the expansion of trade. Enclosures
still continued. Acts of Parliament? were still passed against the
decaying of towns and against the substitution of pasture for
tillage, and one of the most vehement of protests against enclosures,
was made by Francis Trigge,? in 1604. But land was now more
frequently enclosed for arable farming, and there was consequently
less displacement of labour. The great extension of gardens
attached to country houses provided new occupations. Industries
like spinning, weaving, and rope-making, which were previously
confined to particular towns by the craft-organisations of guilds,
spread into rural districts, and employed villagers in supplying not
merely their domestic wants but the needs of manufacturers.
Agriculturally, a change was taking place in the labourer’s condi-
tion. For the cultivation of the soil, farmers, except in the North
and East, looked less to servants in husbandry and more to the day-
labourers, whose wages assumed a new importance in the assess-
ments of the Justices of the Peace. As the prices of agricultural
produce rose, and as, here and there, the improvement of roads
brought new markets within the reach of farmers, it was cheaper

1In the 1692 edition of Angliae Notitia the words ‘ Prodigality, Sports,
and Pastimes ”’ are substituted for “‘ Prodigality and Slothfulness.”’

2 1562-3, 5 Eliz. c. 2; 1597-8, 39 Eliz. cc. 1 and 2; 1601, 43 Eliz. c. 9.
5 The Humble Petition of Two Sisters: the Church and Common-wealth.

LABOURERS AND THEIR WAGES 87

to pay wages to hired labourers than to board agricultural servants,
especially if, as Tusser says, they required roast meat on Sundays
and Thursdays. Free labour, sometimes, but not invariably,
still associated with the occupation of land, was becoming in the
southern and midland counties the chief agent in cultivating the
soil. Where enclosures were fewest, the largest number of labourers
supplemented their wages by the profits of their land, their rights
of common, and their goose-runs. Where enclosures were most
extensive, those labourers were most numerous who were dependent
only on their labour-power. Apparently there was difficulty in
lodging this increasing class of landless labourers, and an attempt
was made to use existing cottages as tenement houses. The Govern-
ment endeavoured to check these tendencies by legislation.t Not
more than one family was allowed to occupy each cottage, and to
every cottage four acres of land were to be attached.

But the most important attempt to regulate the labour-market
was the Statute of Apprentices (1563). This industrial code
““touching divers orders for artificers, labourers, servants of
husbandry, and apprentices’ deals with labour in the towns as
well as in the country. It was framed, partly as a consolidating
Act, partly because, as the Preamble states, the allowances
limited in previous legislation had, owing to the advance in
prices, become too small. It was passed in the hope that its
administration would “ banish idleness, advance husbandry, and
yield unto the hired person both in the time of scarcity and in
the time of plenty a convenient proportion of wages.” It pro-
ceeds on the old lines that men could be compelled to work. But
it contemplates a mininum wage at the rates current in the
district, establishes a working day for summer and winter, and
endeavours to provide for technical instruction by a system of
apprenticeship. Any person between the age of twelve and sixty,
not excepted by the Statute, could be compelled to labour in
husbandry. All engagements, except those for piecework, were to
be for one year. Masters unduly dismissing servants were fined.
Servants unduly leaving masters were imprisoned. No servant
could leave the locality where he was last employed without a
certificate of lawful departure. Hours of labour were twelve hours
in the summer and during daylight in winter. Wages were to be
annually fixed by the Justices of the Peace, after considering the

11589, 31 Eliz. c. 7. 2 1562-3, 5 Eliz. c. 4.

88 THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH

circumstances, in consultation with “such grave and discreet
persons as they shall think meet.” No higher wages than those
settled under the assessment were to be given, or received, under
severe penalties. At harvest time, artificers and persons “ meet
to labour ”’ might be compelled to serve at the mowing or “ inning ”
of hay and corn. Persons over twelve and under eighteen might
be taken as apprentices in husbandry and compelled to serve till
the age of twenty-one. By agreement the age might be extended
to twenty-four.

Under the provisions of this Statute agricultural labourers and
servants were engaged annually. Shortly before Martinmas, the
chief constable of the division sent out notices that he would sit
at a certain town or village on a given day, and required the petty
constables to attend with lists of the masters and servants in their
districts. At the appointed place and time the chief constable met
his subordinates and the masters: the servants also assembled, all
‘* cladde,” as Henry Best describes them,! “‘ in their best apparrell,”’
in the market square, the churchyard, or some other public place.
The chief constable took the lists, called each master in turn accord-
ing to the entries, and asked him whether he was willing to set such
and such a servant at liberty. If the master replied in the negative,
the constable stated what were the wages fixed by the Justices,
received a penny fee from the master, and bound the servant for a
second term of a year. If the answer was in the affirmative, the
constable received from the servant a fee of twopence, and gave him
his certificate of lawful departure. Meanwhile masters who wished
to hire labourers, whether men or women, walked about among the
assembled crowd in order to choose likely-looking servants. When
a master had made his choice, his first enquiry was whether the man
was at liberty. If the servant had his ticket, the master took him
aside, and asked where he was born, where he was last employed.
and what he could do. Best once heard the answer :

““T can sowe,
I can mowe,
And I ean stacke,
And I can doe
My master too,
When my master turnes his backe.”’

If the last employer was present at the sitting, he was sought out,

1 Rural Economy in Yorkshire in 1641, being the Farming and account Books
of Henry Best (Surtees Society, vol. xxxiil. 1857), pp. 132-6.

BIRTH OF AGRICULTURAL LITERATURE 89

and asked whether the man-servant was “true and trustie . .
gentle and quiett . . . addicted to company-keepinge or noe,” or
whether the woman-servant was a good milker, not “ of a sluggish
and sleepie disposition for dainger of fire.’ Then followed the
bargaining for wages. Sometimes the servant asked for a “ gods-
penny ”’ on striking the bargain, “‘ or an old suite, a payre of breeches,
an olde hatte, or a payre of shoes ; and mayde servants to have an
apron, smocke, or both.” Sometimes it was a condition to have so
many sheep wintered and summered with the master’s flock, and to
have the twopence which was paid for the certificate refunded
before handing over the ticket to the new master. Once hired,
the servant could not leave the master, nor the master dismiss the
servant, without a quarter’s warning. In Yorkshire a servant
liked to come to a new place on Tuesday or Thursday. Monday
was counted an unlucky day, and the proverb ran :

“Monday flitte
Never sitte.”’

Farming annals are comparatively silent as to the conditions in
which day-labourers for hire lived in the reign of Elizabeth. But
in one respect, as has been said, they undoubtedly shared the
general prosperity. Though their wages remained low, and only
fitfully rose as the purchasing power of money declined, they were
more secure of employment. In the increased demand for labour
resulting from improved methods of agriculture lay their best
hopes for the future. It is probable that the decay and ultimate
dissolution of the monasteries had for the time inflicted a heavy
blow on the development of agriculture as an art. To English
farming in the early centuries the monks were what capitalist land-
lords became in the eighteenth century. They were the most
scientific farmers of the day: they had access to the practical
learning of the ancients; their intercourse with their brethren
abroad gave them opportunities of benefiting by foreign experience
which were denied to their lay contemporaries. Already, however,
there were signs that their places as pioneers would be occupied.
Throughout Europe agricultural literature was commencing, and
writers were at work urging upon farmers the improved methods
which enclosure revealed to them. In Italy Tarello and the
translators of Crescentius, in the Low Countries Heresbach, in France
Charles Estienne and Bernard Palissy, in England Fitzherbert and
Tusser, wrote upon farming. It was not long before the gentry

96 THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH

began to pay attention to agriculture. As Michel de lH6pital
solaced his exile with a farm at Etampes, so Sir Richard Weston
in the reign of Charles I., and Townshend in that of George II.,
occupied their leisure in farming, and in their retirement conferred
greater benefits on the well-being of England than they had ever
done by their political activities.

Up to the sixteenth century Walter of Henley’s farming treatise
had held the field. Now it was superseded. In 1523 appeared the
Boke of Husbandrye, “‘ compyled,” as Berthelet says in his edition
of 1534, ““sometyme by mayster FitzHerbarde, of Charytie and good
zele that he bare to the weale of this moost noble realme, whiche he
dydde not in his youthe, but after he had exercysed husbandry with
greate experyence XL yeres.”’ In the same year was also printed,
by the same author, the Boke of Surveyinge and Improvements.
The Book of Husbandry is a minutely practical work on farming,
written by a man familiar with the Peak of Derbyshire and by a
horsebreeder on a large scale who possessed ‘‘ 60 mares or more.”
The Book of Surveying is a treatise on the relations of landlord and
tenant and on the best methods of developing an estate. Only
an experienced farmer could have written the first; the second
required no greater acquaintance with law than might be acquired
by a shrewd landowner in the administration of an estate. The
authorship of the two books has been claimed for Anthony Fitz-
herbert, who was knighted in 1521-2 on becoming a Justice of the
Common Pleas, and also for his elder brother John Fitzherbert.1
It is difficult to credit the Judge—immersed in judicial and political
duties, and absorbed in the composition of legal works—with the
practical knowledge of farming displayed in the Book of Husbandry.

1 The dispute as to the authorship of the Books of Husbandry and Surveying
is ancient. Professor Skeat (Introduction to the Book of Husbandry, English
Dialect Society, 1882), and Mr. Rigg (Dictionary of National Biography)
champion Sir Anthony: the Rev. Reginald Fitzherbert (English Historical
Review, April, 1897), Sir Ernest Clarke, whose knowledge of agricultural
bibliography is unrivalled (Yransactions of Bibliog. Soc. 1896, p. 160), and
Mr. Gay (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1904) support the elder brother,
John. The Catalogue of the British Museum now attributes the authorship
of both books to John Fitzherbert. Berthelet, who printed the edition of
1534, speaks of the author, in the passage quoted in the text, as though he
were dead. This would be true of John Fitzherbert, who died in 1531, but
not of Sir Anthony, who lived till 1538. The “‘XL yeres”’ experience, from
which the author wrote, could not be claimed by Sir Anthony in 1523; it
might well have belonged to John, who was his elder brother. It is known
that John Fitzherbert was for four years a student at the Inns of Court,
where he might have laid the foundation of his legal knowledge.

FITZHERBERT AND TUSSER 91

It is much less difficult to imagine that John Fitzherbert should
combine minute experience of agricultural details with a sufficient
knowledge of law to write the Book of Surveying. At any rate,
the Book of Husbandry became, and for more than half a century
remained, a standard work on English farming.

Thirty-four years later appeared Thomas Tusser’s Hundreth Good
Pointes of Husbandrie (1557). The work was afterwards expanded
into Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie, united to as many
Good Pointes of Huswifery (1573). Like Fitzherbert, Tusser was a
champion of enclosures, and his evidence is the more valuable
because he was not only an Essex man, a Suffolk and a Norfolk
farmer, but began to write when the agitation against enclosures in
the eastern counties was at its height. His own life proved the diffi-
culty of combining practice with science, or farming with poetry.
‘“* He spread his bread,” says Fuller, ‘‘ with all sorts of butter, yet
none would ever stick thereon.” He was successively “‘a musician,
schoolmaster, serving-man, husbandman, grazier, poet—more skilful
in all than thriving in his vocation.” To the present generation he
is little more than a name. But his doggerel poems are a rich
storehouse of proverbial wisdom, and of information respecting
the rural life, domestic economy, and agricultural practices of our
Elizabethan ancestors. His work was repeatedly reprinted. It is
also often quoted by subsequent writers, as, for example, by Henry
Best in his Farming Book (1641), by Walter Blith in his English
Improver Improved (1649), and by Worlidge in the Systema Agri-
culturae (1668-9). The practical parts of the poem were edited in
1710 by David Hillman under the title of Tusser Redivivus, with a
commentary which continually contrasts Elizabethan practices
with those of farmers in the reign of Queen Anne. When Lord
Molesworth in 1723 proposed the foundation of agricultural schools,
he advised that Tusser’s “‘ Five hundred points of good husbandry ”’
should be “ taught to the boys to read, to copy and get by heart.”’

From the pages of Fitzherbert and Tusser may be gathered a
picture of Tudor agriculture at the time when Elizabeth came to
the throne. But even in this literature, which probably represents
the most progressive theory and practice of farming, it is difficult
to trace any important change, still less any distinct advance on
thirteenth century methods. Here and there, on the contrary,
there are signs that farmers had gone backwards instead of forwards.
Agricultural implements remained unaltered. Ploughs were still

92 THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH

the same heavy, cumbrous instruments, though several varieties
are mentioned as adapted to the different soils of the country. But
Fitzherbert was familiar with the same device for regulating the
depth and breadth of furrows, which was one of the most notable
improvements in the eighteenth century ploughs. Oxen were still
preferred to horses for ploughing purposes by both Fitzherbert and
Tusser. Iron was more used in the construction of ploughs ; both
share and coulter were more generally of iron, and the latter was
well steeled. Iron also entered more largely into the building of
waggons. Instead of the broad wheels made entirely of wood,
Fitzherbert recommends narrower wheels, bound with iron, as more
lasting and lighter in the draught. So long as artificial grasses
and roots were unknown, the farmer’s year necessarily remained
the same—its calendar of seasonable operations regulated by the
recurrence of saints’ days and festivals, and controlled by a belief
in planetary influences as unscientific as that of Old Moore or Zadkiel.
Since the Middle Ages, the only addition to agricultural resources
had been hops, introduced into the eastern counties from Flanders
at the end of the fifteenth century. The date 1524, which is usually
given for their introduction, is too late; so also is the rhyme, of
which there are several variations :
‘“* Hops, reformation, bays, and beer,
Came into England all in one year.”

Hops were apparently unknown in 1523 to Fitzherbert in Derby-
shire ; but in 1552 they were sufficiently important to be made the
subject of special legislation by Edward VI. In Tusser’s day they
were extensively cultivated in Suffolk. On enclosed land their
cultivation rapidly increased. Harrison (1577) questions whether
any better are to be found than those grown in England.
Reginald Scot, himself a man of Kent, published his Perfite
Platforme of a Hoppe Garden in 1574, with minute instructions
for the growing, picking, drying and packing of hops. The
book was reprinted in 1575, and again in 1576. It was still the
standard work in 1651. In Hartlib’s Legacie it is called “an
excellent Treatise, to the which little or nothing hath been added,
though the best part of an hundred years are since past.”

Fitzherbert starts his Book of Husbandry with the month of
January. But Tusser begins his farmer’s year at Michaelmas as
the usual date of entry. Both writers note that an open-field farmer
entered by custom on his fallows on the preceding Lady-Day, in

CORN CROPS ON TUDOR FARMS 93

order that he might get or keep them in good heart for his autumn
sowing. As the Julian Calendar was still in force, the dates are
twelve days earlier than they would be under the present Gregorian
Calendar. Even with this difference, few farmers of to-day would
accept Tusser’s advice to sow oats and barley in January; they
would be more likely to agree with Fitzherbert that the beginning
of March is soon enough. All wheat and rye were sown in the
autumn,—from August onwards,—and the heaviest grain was
selected for seed by means of the casting shovel. Neither of the
writers speak of spring wheat, possibly because the preparation for
it would not fit in with the rigid rules of open-field farming ; but
both mention other varieties in the three corn crops. Fitzherbert
thinks that red wheat, sprot barley, and red oats are the best, and
peck wheat, bere barley, and rough oats the worst varieties. Mixed
crops were popular, such as dredge, or barley and oats ; bolymong,
or oats, pease, and vetches ; and wheat and rye. As to the mixed
sowing of wheat and rye, the authors differ. Probably their
respective experiences in Derbyshire and Suffolk diverged. Fitz-
herbert advises that wheat and rye should be sown together, as the
blend makes the safest crop and the best for the husbandman’s
household ; but he recommends that white wheat be chosen because
it is the quickest to arrive at maturity.1 He was therefore no
believer in the slowness of rye to ripen. Tusser, on the other hand,
condemns the practice of sowing the two corns together because of
the slow maturity of rye as compared with the relative rapidity
of wheat. If they are to be blended, he says, let it be done by the
miller. The seed was to be covered in as soon as possible. On
the time-honoured question whether rooks are greater malefactors
than benefactors,—whether they prefer grubs and worms to grain,—
neither writer has any doubt. Both give their verdict against the
bird, in the spirit of the legislation of their day.2~ As soon as the
corn is in, says Fitzherbert, it should be harrowed, or ‘‘ croues,
doues, and other Byrdes wyll eate and beare away the cornes.”
Tusser advises that girls should be armed with slings, and boys
with bows, “ to scare away pigeon, the rook, and the crow.” Both
writers urge the preparation of a fine tilth for barley,—in rural

1 Henry Best, writing a century later (1641), preferred ‘‘ Kentish wheate
... or that which (hereabouts) is called Dodde-reade”’ (Farming Book,
p. 45).

2 H.g. 24 Hen. VIII. c. 10; 8 Eliz. ec. 15.

94 THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH

phrase “‘ as fine as an ant-hill,’—and advise that it should be rolled.
Tusser recommends that wheat should also be rolled, if the land
is sufficiently dry. For seeding, Fitzherbert adopts the mediaeval
rule of two bushels of wheat and rye to the acre. All seeds were
scattered broadcast by the hand from the hopper. Neither writer
mentions the dibbing of beans, though that useful practice had been
introduced by thirteenth century farmers. For barley, oats, and
‘“‘codware,”’ Fitzherbert recommends a thicker seeding than was
practised in mediaeval farming. The best yield per acre is obtained
from moderate or thin sowing. But it has been suggested that
Elizabethan farmers more often allowed their land to become foul,
and that crops were more thickly sown in the hope of saving them
from being smothered. The suggestion is perhaps confirmed by
the space which Fitzherbert devotes to weeds, and by his careful
description of the most noxious plants. At harvest, wheat and rye
were generally cut with the sickle, and barley and oats were mown
with the scythe. Fitzherbert advises that corn ricks should be
built on scaffolds and not on the ground. In the eighteenth century
the advice was still given and still unheeded.

In their treatment of drainage and manure, neither author makes
any advance on mediaeval practice. To prevent excessive wetness,
both advise a water-furrow to be drawn across the ridges on the
lowest part of the land; but neither describes the shallow drains,
filled with stones, and covered in with turf, which were familiar to
farmers in the Middle Ages. Mole-heaps, if carefully spread, are
not an unmixed evil. But when Tusser champions the mole as a
useful drainer of wet pastures, it is evident that the science of
draining was yet unborn. In choice of manure, neither writer
appears to command the resources of his ancestors. The want of
fertilising agencies was then, and may even now prove to be, one
of the obstacles to small holdings. At the present day the small
cultivator can, if he has money enough, buy chemical manures, and,
unlike his Elizabethan ancestor, he no longer uses his straw or the
dung of his cattle as fuel. But when chemical manures were
unknown, it was imperatively necessary to employ all natural
fertilisers. Fitzherbert does indeed deplore the disappearance of
the practice of marling.t But Tusser does not mention the value

1 Arthur Standish, writing in 1611, says that straw and dung were used
as fuel (The Commons Complaint, p. 2), and Markham (Enrichment of the
Weald of Kent) shows the antiquity of the practice of marling by saying that

ces

trees of 200 or 300 years old may be seen in “‘innumerable”’ spent marl-pits.

SHEEP ON OPEN-FIELD FARMS 95

of marl, lime, chalk, soot, or town refuse, all of which were used in
the Middle Ages, and it is doubtful whether mediaeval farmers
followed his practice of rotting straw in pits filled with water, or of
carting manure on to the land and leaving it in heaps for a month
before it was spread or ploughed in. One new practice, and that
a miserable one, is reeommended. It is suggested that buck-wheat
should be sown and ploughed in, in order to enrich the soil.

Both Tusser and Fitzherbert advise that on open-field land the
sheep should be folded from May to early in September. But
Fitzherbert believed that folding fostered the scab. Among the
practical advantages of enclosures whith he urges is the opportunity
that they afforded to farmers of dispensing with the common fold,
saving the fees to the common shepherd and the cost of hurdles and
stakes, and keeping their flocks in better health. June was the
month for shearing. Fitzherbert recommends that sheep should
be carefully washed before they were shorn, “‘ the which shall be
to the owner greate profyte’”’ in the sale of his wool. Probably
the modern farmer has found that his unwashed wool at a greater
weight but a lower price is worth as much as his washed wool at
less weight and a higher price. Fitzherbert considers sheep to be
‘the most profitable cattle that any man can have.” But, until
the introduction of turnips, the true value of sheep on arable land
could not be realised. Hence the two branches of farming, which
are now combined with advantage to both the sheep farmer and
the corn-grower, were entirely dissevered. Until clover, artificial
grasses, turnips, swedes, mangolds took their place among the
ordinary crops for which arable land was cultivated, no farmer
experienced the full truth of the saying that the foot of the sheep
turns sand into gold. The practice of milking ewes still continued.
Fitzherbert condemns it ; but Tusser, though he notices the injuri-
ous results, weakens the effect of his warning by promising that
five ewes will give as much milk as one cow. Neither Fitzherbert
nor Tusser has anything to say on the improvement of breeds of
cattle for the special purposes that they serve. The “ general
utility ’ animal was still their ideal. Yet the root of the matter is
in Fitzherbert, when he says that a man cannot thrive by corn
unless he have live-stock, and that the man who tries to keep live-
stock without corn is either ‘“‘ a buyer, a borrower, or a beggar.”
If once the difficulty of winter keep could be solved, here was the
secret of mixed husbandry realised, and the truth of the maxim

96 THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH

verified that a full bullock yard makes a full stack-yard. On
horses and horse-dealing Fitzherbert is full of shrewdness. He
defines the horse-master, the “ corser’’ and the “horse leche.”
‘“* And whan these three be mette,”’ he dryly observes, “‘ if yeh adde
a poty-carye to make the fourthe, ye myghte have suche foure,
that it were harde to truste the best of them.”

The times at which Fitzherbert and Tusser respectively wrote give
special interest to their championship of enclosures. As has been
already noticed, both wrote when the agitation against the progress
of the movement was at its height, and Tusser was familiar with
the eastern counties at the moment of Kett’s insurrection in Norfolk.
As practical farmers both writers insist on the evils of the open-
field system ; but it fell within the province of neither to criticise
the tyrannical proceedings by which those evils were often remedied.
They rather dwell on the superior yield of enclosed lands,1 and on
the obstacles to successful farming presented by open-fields—the
perpetual disputes, the damage to crops, the waste of land by the
multitude of drift-ways, the cost of swineherds, cowherds, and
shepherds who were employed as human fences to the corn and
meadows. Incidentally also they reveal many practical difficulties
of the open-field farmer in ploughing and draining. During the
winter months, he was obliged to bring his live-stock in sooner,
keep them longer, and feed them at greater cost, than his neighbour
on enclosed land. For winter keep, when his hay and straw were
running out, he had nothing to rely on but ‘“‘ browse” or tree-
loppings. In rearing live-stock he was heavily handicapped.
Unless he had pasture of his own, he was forced to time his lambs
to fall towards the middle of March. Hence the proverb:

“* At St. Luke’s day (Oct. 18, Greg. Cal.)
Let tup have play.”

Thus he risked losing lambs because the common shepherd had too
much on his hands at once ; his lambs lost a month on the meadow
before it was put up for hay ; and the owner missed the profits of
an early sale at Helenmas (May 21), and had to sell, if he sold
at all, at the same time as all other open-field farmers. The same
restrictions hampered him in rearing calves. He could not afford
to keep the cow and calf in the winter; therefore he was obliged
to time the calf to come after Candlemas.

These and other disadvantages convinced practical agriculturists

1 See ch. iii. pp. 65-66.

AGRICULTURAL ADVANTAGES OF ENCLOSURES 97

of the inferiority of the open-field system. Experience was in
favour of enclosures. Fitzherbert points to the prosperity of Essex
as an example of the advantage of enclosures. The author of the
Compendious or Briefe Examination says that “ the countries where
most enclosures be are most wealthie, as Essex, Kent, Deven-
shire.” So also Tusser compares “champion” (open) counties,
like Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, with ‘enclosed’ counties, like
Essex and Suffolk and says that the latter have

“More plenty of mutton and biefe,

Corne, butter, and cheese of the best,

More wealth anywhere, to be briefe,
More people, more handsome and prest. .. .

”

2

The proverbial expression ‘“ Suffolk stiles” seems to point to the
early extinction of open-fields. Norden in his Hssex Described +
(1594) calls the county the “ Englishe Goshen, the fattest of the
Lande; comparable to Palestina, that flowed with milke and
hunnye.” So “ manie and sweete”’ were the ‘“‘ commodeties ” of
Essex, that they compensated for the “moste cruell quarterne fever ”’
which he caught among its low-lying lands. Every practical argu-
ment that could be pleaded against open-field farms in the days
of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth might be urged against the system
with treble force from the end of the eighteenth century onwards,
when farming had grown more scientific, when new crops had been
introduced, when drainage had been reduced to a science, and when,
under the pressure of a rapidly increasing population, farms were
becoming factories of bread and meat.

Enclosures undoubtedly assisted farming progress. Before the
end of the reign the effect of the movement, combined with increased
facilities of communication, is distinctly visible. Under the spur
which individual occupation and better markets gave to enter-
prise, “the soil,” as Harrison says, “had growne to be more
fruitful, and the countryman more painful, more careful, and more
skilful for recompense of gain.” Increased attention was paid to
manuring. In Cornwall, farmers rode many miles for sand and
brought it home on horseback ; sea-weed was extensively used in
South Wales ; in Sussex, lime was fetched from a distance at heavy
expense ; in Hertfordshire, the sweepings of the streets were bought
up for use on the land. The yield of corn per acre was rising. On
the well-tilled and dressed acre, we are told that wheat now averaged

1 Camden Society (1840), p. 7.
G

98 THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH

twenty bushels, and that barley sometimes rose to thirty-two
bushels, and oats and beans to forty bushels. The improvement of
pastures is shown in the increased size and weight of live-stock.
The average dead weight of sheep and cattle in 1500 probably did
not exceed 28 lbs. and 320 Ibs. respectively. At the beginning of
the seventeenth century the dead weight of the oxen and sheep
supplied to the Prince of Wales’s household was no doubt excep-
tional ; but the difference is considerable. ‘‘ An ox should weigh
600 Ibs. the four quarters .. . a mutton should weigh 46 lbs. or 44
Ibs.”” A new incentive to improvement in arable farming and stock-
rearing was supplied by the lower price of wool, consequent partly
on over-production, partly on deterioration in quality. This
deterioration was in some cases the result of enclosures. The wool
was sacrificed to the mutton, and the demand for butcher’s meat
was not yet sufficient to make the sacrifice profitable. When
English wool first came into the Flemish market, it was distinguished
for its fineness, and sold at a higher rate than its Spanish rival. It
was indispensable for the foreign weaver. The best fleeces were
those of the Ryeland or Herefordshire sheep, for which Leominster
was the principal market. In the days of Skelton, Elynour Rum-
mynge, ale-wife of Leatherhead, had no enviable reputation ; but
when her customers made a payment in kind, she was a shrewd
judge of its value :
“Some fill their pot full
Of good Lemster wool.”

Drayton’s Dowsabel had a “ skin as soft as Lemster wool.” Rabe-
lais makes Panurge cheapen the flock of Ding-dong ; and when the
latter descants upon the fineness of their wool, the English translator
(Motteux, 1717) compares them to the quality of ‘‘ Lemynster
wool.” From the preamble to a statute of the reign of James I.
(4 Jac. I. c. 2.) it would seem that Ryeland flocks were cotted all
the year. The second price was fetched by Cotswold wool. The
sheep that are kept on downs, heaths and commons produce the
finest, though not the heaviest, fleeces. It was the experience of
Virgil :

** Si tibi lanicium curae, .. . fuge pabula laeta.”’

In the same sense wrote Dyer :

** On spacious airy downs, and gentle hills,
With grass and thyme o’erspread, and clover wild,
The fairest flocks rejoice ! ”’

BARNABY GOOGE 99

As the commons and wastes of England began to be extensively
enclosed, the quality of the fleece deteriorated. Heavier animals—
better suited to fat enclosed pastures, and producing coarser wool—
were introduced. English wool lost its pre-eminence abroad ; and,
though still commanding high prices, was no longer indispensable for
foreign weavers. The loss was to a great extent counterbalanced
by increased consumption at home. But, at the time, the decrease
in value was at least as influential in. checking the conversion of
arable land to pasture as were Acts of Parliament.

Open-field farms were not as yet such obstacles to agricultural
progress as they became after the discovery of new resources and
new rotations of crops which could only be utilised to full advantage
on enclosed lands. But already these new sources of wealth were
in sight. The great difficulties in the way of mediaeval and Tudor
farmers were want of winter keep and lack of means to maintain or
restore the fertility of exhausted soils. In the agricultural literature
of Elizabeth the remedy for both is dimly suggested.

In 1577 appeared Foure Bookes of Husbandry,: to which Barnaby
Googe, a better poet than Tusser, gave his name. The work was a
translation of Heresbach, with 16 additional pages by the translator.
Googe mentions Fitzherbert or Tusser as writers worthy to be
ranked with *“‘ Varro, Columella, and Palladius of Rome”; advises
agriculturists to read ‘“‘ Maister Reynolde Scot’s booke of Hoppe
Gardens’; and quotes an imposing list of ‘‘ Aucthors and Hus-
bandes whose aucthorities and observations are used in this book.”
By this reference he does not necessarily mean that all the men
whose names he mentions had written books on farming, but rather
that he had consulted those who were reputed to be most skilful in
its practice. In other words, there were already agriculturists,
like “‘ Capt. Byngham,” ‘‘ John Somer,” “‘ Richard Deeryng,”
““Henry Denys,” or ‘“ William Pratte,’ whose methods were an
object lesson to their less advanced neighbours. Googe’s book has
been despised because it was “made in Germany.” But in this
fact lies its chief value. The farming of the Low Countries was
better than the farming of England, and Googe gives English agri-
culturists the benefit of foreign experience. He is the first writer
to mention a reaping machine—“a lowe kinde of carre with a
couple of wheeles and the frunt armed with sharpe syckles, whiche,

1 Foure Bookes of Husbandry, collected by M. Conradus Heresbachius.. .
Newely Englished and increased by Barnabe Googe Esquire, London, 1577.

100 THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH

forced by the beaste through the corne, did cut down al before it.”
He insists on the extreme importance of manure, and the value of
marl, chalk, and ashes. But he does not consider that farmers
can thrive by manure alone. On the contrary, he thinks that “ the
best doung for ground is the Maister’s foot, and the best provender
for the house the Maister’s eye.” He also gives a caution against
the persistent use of chalk, because, in the end, it ‘‘ brings the grounde
to be starke nought, whereby the common people have a speache,
that grounde enriched with chalke makes a riche father and a
beggerly sonne.”” He mentions the use of rape in the Principality
of Cleves, a valuable suggestion whether for green-manuring, for
the oil in its seeds, or for use as fodder for sheep. He commends
‘“* Trefoil or Burgundian grass,’ which he believes to be of Moorish
origin and Spanish introduction, for “‘ there can be no better fodder
devised for cattell.”’ He says that turnips have been found in the
Low Countries to be good for live-stock, and that, if sown at Mid-
summer, they will be ready for winter food. In English gardens
turnips were already known. They appear under the name of
““ turnepez’”’ among “ Rotys for a gardyn” in a fifteenth century
book of cookery recipes ; Andrew Borde ! (1542) recommends them
“boyled and eaten with flesshe’’; William Turner, the herbalist,
mentions that “the great round rape called a turnepe groweth in
very great plenty in all Germany and more about London then
in any other place of England ”’: Tusser classes them among “ roots
to boil and to butter”’; but Googe, though only as a translator,
was the first writer to suggest that field cultivation of turnips
which revolutionised English farming.

Another Elizabethan writer makes the first attempt to combine
science with practice. Sir Hugh Plat was an ingenious inventor,
and, as Sir Richard Weston calls him, ‘‘ the most curious man of
his time.”” He devotes the second part of his Jewell House of Art
and Nature (1594) to the scientific manuring of arable and pasture
land. Manure presents itself to his poetic mind as a Goddess with
a Cornucopia in her hand. If land, he says, is perpetually cropped,
the earth is robbed of her vegetative salt, and ceases to bear. The
object, therefore, of the wise husbandman must be to restore this
essential element of fertility. His list of manurial substances is
long. He recommends not only farm-yard dung, but marl, lime,
street refuse, the subsoil of ponds and “ watrie bottomes,” salt,

1 Dyetary, ch. xix.

SIR HUGH PLAT 101

ashes from the burning of stubble, weeds, and bracken ; the hair
of beasts, malt dust, soap-ashes, putrified pilchards, garbage of
fish, blood offal and the entrails of animals. He warns farmers
of the difficulty in discovering the right proportion of marl to lay
on different sorts of soil. He condemns the waste of the richest
properties of farm-yard manure, and recommends the use of covers
to all pits used for its accumulation. e himself used a barn roof
at his farm at St. Albans, which moved up and down on upright
supports, so that the muck-heap could be raised, yet always remain
under cover. In his Arte of setting of Corne (1600) he advocates
dibbing as superior to broadcast sowing. He traces the origin
of the practice to the accident of a silly wench, who deposited
some seeds of wheat in holes intended for carrots. He goes so
far as to say that, by dibbing, the average yield of wheat per
acre would be raised from 4 quarters to 15 quarters!

The growth of an agricultural literature, as well as Googe’s list
of notable authorities, suggest that landowners were beginning to
interest themselves in corn and cattle. Probably their taste for
farming was encouraged by the fashionable love for horticulture.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries both had declined : in the
Tudor age both revived. The garden was the precursor of the
home-farm. In the reign of Elizabeth, gardening became one of
the pursuits and pleasures of English country life. The art was
loved by Bacon ; it was patronised by Burghley and Walsingham ;
it gathered round it a rich literature ; it claimed the services of
explorers and builders of Empire like Sir Walter Raleigh. Tudor
architects used pleasure gardens to carry on and support the lines
of their main buildings, and even repeated the patterns of their
mural decorations in the geometrical “Knots” of their flower
borders; but they banished kitchen gardens out of sight. The
cultivation of vegetables made less progress than that of flowers
and fruits. This useful side of horticulture, like farming, was as
yet comparatively neglected by the Tudor gentry. But an advance
was made. The first step was to recover lost ground. In order
to flatter Elizabeth, Harrison probably exaggerated the disuse of
vegetables before the accession of her father. He over-states his
case when he says that garden-produce, which before was treated
as fit for hogs and savage beasts, now supplied not only food for
the “‘ poore commons ”’ but “‘ daintie dishes at the tables of delicate
merchants, gentlemen, and the nobilitie.”’ It was doubtless true

102 THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH

that the art of gardening, like that of farming, had declined during
the period which preceded Tudor times. Yet in the decadent
fifteenth century, rape, carrots, parsnips, turnips, cabbages, leeks,
onions, garlic, as well as numerous ‘“ Herbes for Potage,” and
““ Herbes for a salade ’’ appeared in a book on gardens,! or in the
recipes of cookery books. On the other hand, it is said that, in
the reign of Henry VIII., Queen Catherine was provided with salads
from Flanders, because none could be furnished at home, and that
onions and cabbages, known in the reign of Henry III. and praised
by Piers Plowman, were in the first part of the fifteenth century
imported from the Low Countries. Now, however, in the reign of
Henry VIII. and onwards, gardening, as Fuller says, began to creep
out of Holland into England. In Shakespeare’s day, it may be
remembered that potatoes? as yet only “ rained from the sky” and
that Anne Page would rather
“be set quick i’ the earth,
And bowled to death with turnips,”

than marry the wrong man. Sandwich became famous for its
carrots, and in the neighbourhood of Fulham, and along the Suffolk
coast, gardens were laid out in which vegetables were extensively
cultivated. In rich men’s gardens potatoes found a place after
1585, though for some years to come, they were regarded, and sold,
as luxuries. Here then were accumulating new sources of future
advance in farming. Yet progress must have been slow. Robert
Child, writing anonymously on the “ Deficiencies’ of agriculture
in 1651,3 says: ‘‘Some old men in Surrey, where it (the Art of
Gardening) flourisheth very much at present, report, That they
knew the first Gardiners that came into those parts, to plant Cab-
ages, Colleflowers, and to sowe T'urneps, Carrets, and Parsnips, and
to sowe Raith [early] Pease, all of which at that time were great
rarities, we having few, or none in England, but what came from
Holland and Flaunders.”’ He goes on to say that he could name
‘“‘ places, both in the North and West of England, where the name
of Gardening and Howing is scarcely knowne, in which places a few
Gardiners might have saved the lives of many poor people, who
have starved these dear years.”

1 The Feate of Gardeninge, by Mayster Ion Gardener, printed in Archacologia,
vol. liv., with a glossary by Mrs. Evelyn Cecil.

* Merry Wives of Windsor, Act. v. Se. 5 and Act ui. Se. 4.
3 Hartlib’s Legacie (1651), pp. 11-12.

PROMISE OF PROGRESS 103

CHAPTER VY.

FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION (1603-1660).

FARMING UNDER THE FIRST STEWARTS AND THE
COMMONWEALTH.

Promise of agricultural progress checked by the Civil War: agricultural
writers and their suggestions: Sir Richard Weston on turnips and clover :
conservatism of English farmers; their dislike to book-farming not un-
reasonable: unexhausted improvements discussed; Walter Blith on
drainage: attempts to drain the fens in the eastern counties ; the resist-
ance of the fenmen: new views on commons: Winstanley’s claims:
enclosures advocated as a step towards agricultural improvement.

THE beginning of the seventeenth century promised to usher in
a new era of agricultural prosperity. During the first four decades
of the period prospects steadily brightened. No general improve-
ment in farming practices had been possible until a considerable area
of land had been enclosed in one or other of the various forms which
enclosures might assume. Under the Tudor sovereigns—in the
midst of much agrarian suffering and discontent—this indispensable
work had been begun, and it continued throughout the seventeenth
century. Estates were consolidated; small farms were thrown
together ; open village farms in considerable numbers gave place
to compact and separate freeholds or tenancies ; agrarian partner-
ships, in which it was no man’s interest to be energetic, made way,
here and there, for that individual occupation which offered the
strongest incentive to enterprise. Thus opportunities were afforded
for the introduction of new crops, the application of land to its best
use, and the adoption of improved methods. Dairying was extended
in the vales of the West and South West; corn and meat found
better and dearer markets; under the spur of increased profits
arable farming again prospered, and the conversion of tillage to
pasture was arrested. New materials for agricultural wealth were
accumulating ; turnips, already grown in English gardens, were

104 FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION

recommended for field cultivation; twenty years later, potatoes
were suggested as a farming crop; the value of clover and other
artificial grasses had been recognised, and urged upon English
farmers. Methods became less barbarous. An Act of Parliament
was passed “ agaynst plowynge by the taile,” and the custom of
“* pulling off the wool yearly from living sheep ” was declared illegal.
Drainage was discussed with a sense and sagacity which were not
rivalled till the nineteenth century. Increased care was given to
manuring ; new fertilismg agencies were suggested ; the merits of
Peruvian guano were explained by G. de la Vega at Lisbon in 1602 ;
the use of valuable substances, known to our ancestors but discon-
tinued, was revived. Attention was paid to the improvement of
agricultural implements. Patents were taken out for draining
machines (Burrell, 1628) ; for new manures (1636) ; for improved
courses of husbandry (Chiver, 1637 and 1640) ; for ploughs (Hamil-
ton, 1623; Brouncker, 1627; Parham, 1634); for instruments for
mechanical sowing (Ramsey, 1634, and Plattes, 1639). On all sides
new energies seemed to be aroused.

Much of the land had changed hands during the preceding cen-
tury, and the infusion of new blood into the ownership of the soil
introduced a more enterprising and business-like spirit into farming.
The increased wealth of landowners showed itself in the erection of
Jacobean mansions; farmer owners, tenant-farmers for lives or
long terms of years, copyholders at fixed quit-rents, made money.
Only the agricultural labourer still suffered. His wages rose more
slowly than the prices of the necessaries of life; his hold on the
land was relaxing ; his dependence upon his labour-power became
more complete. He was more secure of employment; but in this
respect alone was his lot altered for the better.

The promise of improvement was checked by the cubtmeete of
the Civil War. Excepting those who were directly engaged in the
struggle, men seemed to follow their ordinary business and their
accustomed pursuits. The story that a crowd of country gentle-
men followed the hounds across Marston Moor between the two
armies drawn up in hostile array, may not be true ; but it illustrates
the temper of a large proportion of the inhabitants. It was the
prevailing sense of insecurity, rather than the actual absorption of
the whole population in the war, that caused the promise of agri-
cultural progress to perish in the bud. In more settled times under
the Commonwealth, farming prospects again brightened. But

POLITICS SUSPEND PROGRESS 105

practical progress was once more suspended by the social changes
and political uncertainties of the last half of the seventeenth century.
Agriculture languished, if it did not actually decline. It is a
significant fact that between 1640 and 1670 not more than six
patents were taken out for agricultural improvements. Country
gentlemen ceased to interest themselves in farming pursuits. ‘‘ Our
gentry,” notes Pepys, “ are grown ignorant in everything of good
husbandry.” Without their initiative ‘progress was almost im-
possible. Open-field farmers could not change their field-customs
without the consent of the whole body of partners. Farmers in
individual occupation of their holdings had not, as a general rule,
the enterprise, the education, the capital, or the security of tenure,
to conduct experiments or adopt improvements.

But the period was one of active preparation. A crowd of
agricultural writers followed in the train of Fitzherbert, Tusser,
and Googe. Leonard Mascall in his Booke of Cattell (1591) had
instructed husbandmen in the more skilful “ government” of
horses, oxen, cattle, and sheep. Gervase Markham wrote on every
variety of agricultural subjects, multiplying his treatises under
different titles with a rapidity which gained for him the distinction
of being the “ first English hackwriter,” and proved that books on
farming found a sale.1 Horses were made the subject of special
treatment. Blundeville’s Fower chiefyst offices belonging to Horse-
manshippe (1565-6) was followed by such books as Markham’s
Discourse on Horsemanshippe (1593) and How to Chuse, Ride, Trayne,

1 As an agricultural writer, Markham’s reputation was doubtful, in spite
of the many editions which were published of his works. In Hartlib’s Legacie
(1651) R. Child in his “‘ Large Letter ’’ had spoken of the want of a complete
book on English husbandry. On this a critic had remarked ‘‘ England hath a
perfect systeme of Husbandry, viz. Markham.’ The author replies (Legacie,
3rd edition, 1655): ‘‘ He speaketh more of Markham than ever I heard
before, or as yet have seen. In general he is accounted little more than a
Translator, unless about Cattle, and yet I cannot but in that question his
skill, ... The works which I have seen of his are, first, the great book
translated out of French” (The Country Farm, 1616, a revision of Surflet’s
translation of the Maison Rustique, with additions from foreign writers),
** which whether well or ill done, I will not declare ; but I am sure our Hus-
bandmen in England profit little by it. Secondly I have seen five several
bookes bound up together, two or three of which he acknowledgeth to be
anothers, as The Improvement of the Wild of Kent, also his Houswifery he
acknowledgeth to have had from a Countess, also part of his Farewell is
borrowed, and what he owneth, if I have seen all, are very short in many
particulars. ... Yea, if I understand any thing, he setteth down many
gross untruths, which every Countryman will contradict.’””’ He quotes
instances, and concludes “he hath done well in divers things, and is to be
commended for his industry.”

106 FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION

and Dyet both Hunting and Running Horses (1599), by Grymes’s
Honest and Plaine Dealing Farrier (1636), and by John Crawshey’s
Countryman’s Instructor (1636). Then, as now, horsedealing was a
trial of the sharpest wits, blunted by the fewest scruples. Crawshey,
who describes himself as a “ plaine Yorkshire man,” warns his
readers against being deceived when buying horses in the market,
“for many men will protest and sweare that they are sound when
they know the contrary, onely for their private gaine.”” Where so
much is strange in farming matters, it is refreshing to find familiar
features. The proper treatment of woodlands was discussed by
Standish (1611). Rowland Vaughan (1610), struck by the sight of
a streamlet issuing from a mole-heap in a bank, discussed new
methods of irrigation, or “the summer and winter drowning ”’ of
meadows and pasture. Even the smaller profits of farming received
attention. Numerous books were published on orchards, and on
gardens, in which were now accumulating such future stores of
agricultural riches as turnips, carrots, and potatoes. Mascall in
1581 had written on the “‘ husbandlye Ordring of Poultry”; Sir
Hugh Plat had instructed housewives in the art of fattening fowls
for the table ; and John Partridge published a treatise on the same
subjects, in which he gives recipes for keeping their natural foes at
bay. The following may be recommended to Hunt Secretaries, who
are impoverished by demands on their poultry funds. ‘ Rub your
poultry,” says Partridge, ‘‘ with the juice of Rue or Herbe grasse
and the wesels shall do them no hurt; if they eate the lungs or
lights of a Foxe, the Foxes shall not eate them.’ Nor were bees
neglected. Thomas Hill (1568), and Edmund Southerne (1593) had
written on the “right ordering” of bees. But Charles Butler’s
Feminine Monarchie (1609), and John Levett’s Orderinge of Bees
(1634) became the standard authorities on the subject. Both books
were known to Robert Child, author of the Large Letter on the
deficiencies of English husbandry, published by Hartlib in 1651.1
He says that Butler “ hath written so exactly, and upon his owne
experience ” that little remained to be added. Henry Best (1641),?
however, preferred Levett to any other writer on bee-keeping.
‘* Hee is the best,” he thinks, “‘ that ever writte of this subjeckt.”’

During the same period men like Gabriel Plattes or Sir Richard

1 Hartlib’s Legacie, p. 64. Robert Child in the 1651 edition speaks of Levett
as ‘‘ Leveret.”’

2 Farming Book, p. 68.

SIR RICHARD WESTON 107

Weston were suggesting new agricultural methods, or introducing
new crops which were destined to change the face of English farm-
ing. Plattes (1638), who seems to have been of Flemish origin,
urged that corn should be steeped before sowing, and not sown
broadcast but set in regular rows. To those who adopted the sug-
gestion of the “‘ corn setter,’ he promised a yield of a hundred-fold,
and he invented a drill to facilitate and cheapen the process. Plattes
was on the verge of a great improvement. But men who looked
for no larger return than six-fold of eight-fold on the grain sown,
regarded his promise as the dream of a visionary who had not
travelled beyond the sound of Bow Bells. Unfortunately, the
career of Plattes confirmed the contempt with which practical
farmers were ready to regard the theories of agricultural writers.
Like Tusser, he failed in farming. As Tusser died (1580) in the
debtor’s prison of the Poultry Compter, so Plattes is said to have
died starving and shirtless in the streets of London.

Sir Richard Weston could at least lay claim to thirty years
experience in the successful improvement of his estates at Sutton
in Surrey “ by Fire and Water.” He had enriched his heathy land
by the process of paring and burning, “‘ which wee call Devon-
shiring ’’; he had also adopted Vaughan’s suggestion of irrigation,
and proved its value on his own meadows. But the important
change with which Weston’s name will always be associated is the
introduction of a new rotation of crops, founded on the field cultiva-
tion of roots and clover. As Brillat-Savarin valued a new dish
above a new star, so Arthur Young regards Weston as “a greater
benefactor than Newton.” He did indeed offer bread and meat
to millions. Whether Weston had visited Flanders before 1644 is
uncertain. His attempt to make the Wey navigable by means of
locks suggests that he was acquainted with the foreign system of
canals. On the other hand, his treatise on agriculture implies that
he paid his first visit to the country in that year as a refugee. A
Royalist and a Catholic, Weston, at the outbreak of the Civil War,
was driven into exile, and his estates were sequestrated. He took
refuge in Flanders. There he studied the Flemish methods of
agriculture, especially their use of flax, clover, and turnips. For
the field cultivation of clover he advises that heathy ground should
be pared, burned, limed, and well ploughed and harrowed ; that
the seed should be sown in April, or the end of March, at the rate

1 Hartlib’s Legacie (3rd edition, 1655), p. 183.

108 FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION

of ten pounds of seed to the acre ; that, once sown, the crop should
be left for five years. The results of his observations, embodied in
his Discours of the Husbandrie used in Brabant and Flanders, were
written in 1645 and left to his sons as a “ Legacie.” The subse-
quent history of the ‘“ Legacie”’ is curious. Circulated in manu-
script, an imperfect copy fell into the hands of Samuel Hartlib,
who piratically published it in 1650, with an unctuous dedication
“to the Right Honorable the Council of State.’ In the following
year Hartlib seems to have learned the name of the author and to
have obtained possession of a more perfect copy. He therefore
wrote two letters to Weston, asking him to correct and enlarge his
‘“* Discourse.”’ Receiving no answer, he republished the treatise in
1651. Eighteen years later, the Discours was again appropriated—
this time by Gabriel Reeve, who, in 1670, reprinted it under the
title of Directions left by a Gentleman to his Sons for the Improve-
ment of Barren and Heathy Land in England and Wales.

Roots, clover, and artificial grasses subsequently revolutionised
English farming ; but it was more than a century before their use
became at all general. Other crops were pressed by agricultural
writers upon the attention of farmers—such as flax, hemp, hops,
woad and madder for dyes, saffron, liquorice, rape, and coleseed.
A more important suggestion was the field cultivation of potatoes,
which hitherto had been treated as exotics, rarely found except in
the gardens of the rich. In 1664 John Forster! urged farmers to
grow them in their fields. He distinguishes “‘ Irish Potatoes ” from
Spanish, Canadian, or Virginian varieties, points to their success in
Treland, notices their introduction into Wales and the North of
England, and recommends their trial in other parts of the country.
It was not till the Napoleonic wars that the advice was taken to
any general extent. None of these crops, it may be observed,
could be introduced on an open-field farm, unless the whole body
of agrarian partners agreed to alter their field customs.

Another noteworthy book is the Legacie (1651), which passes
under the name of Samuel Hartlib, who has gained undeserved credit
by his piracy of Weston’s work. By birth a Pole, Hartlib had come
to England in 1628. By his Reformation of Schooles (1642), trans-
lated from Comenius, he forced himself on the notice of Milton, who
in 1644 curtly addressed to him his Tract Of Education. From
Weston’s Discours, Hartlib stole the title of the Legacie (1651), com-

1 Hngland’s Happiness Increased, etc., by John Forster Gent. 1664.

FARMING DEFICIENCIES 109

posed of letters from various writers on the defects of English
agriculture, and theirremedies. Five-sixths of the Legacie are taken
up with “A Large Letter ... written to M. Samuel Hartlib,”
signed (1655), by R. Child. It throws a clear light on some of the
conditions of English farming in the middle of the seventeenth
century.

In the “ Large Letter ” the cumbrousness of the English ploughs,
carts, and waggons is noticed. Clumsy implements and bad prac-
tices were said to exist side by side with obvious improvements,
which yet found no imitators. Some Kentish farmers used “4, 6,
yea 12 horses and oxen” in their ploughs, and in Ireland farmers
fastened their horses by the tails. Yet in Norfolk the practice was
to plough with two horses only, while in Kent itself, a certain
Colonel Blunt of Gravesend ploughed with one horse, and an ingeni-
ous yeoman had invented a double-furrow plough. Men who
perplexed their brains about perpetual motion would, says the
writer, have used their ingenuity to more effect if they had tried
to improve the implements of agriculture. Cattle-breeding, except
“in Lancashire and some few Northern Counties”? was not studied ;
no attempt was made to improve the best breeds for milking or
for fattening. Dairying needed attention ; butter might be “ better
sented and tasted’’.; our cheeses were inferior to those of Italy,
France, or Holland.t Various remedies against the prevalence of
smut and mildew in wheat are suggested, including lime, change of
seed, early sowing, and the use of bearded wheat. Flax and hemp
were unduly neglected, though both might be grown, it is sug-
gested, with profit to agriculturists, and to the great increase of
employment; as a remedy against this persistent neglect, the
author advocates compulsory legislation, to force farmers, “‘ even
like brutes, to understand their own good.’ Twenty-one natural
substances are recommended as manures, the value of which had
been proved by experience. Among them are chalk, marl, lime,
farm-yard dung, if it is not too much exposed to the sun and rain ;
““ snaggreet,” or soil full of small shells taken out of rivers, and
much used in Surrey; owse, from marshy ditches or foreshores ;
seaweed ; sea-sand, as used in Cornwall; “folding of sheepe after

1 This also had been the opinion of Googe, who places the Parmesan cheese
of Italy first. Then follow, in order of merit, the cheeses of Holland, Nor-
mandy, and lastly, of England. Among English cheeses the best came from

Cheshire, Shropshire, Banbury, Suffolk, and Essex. ‘“‘ The very worste”’ is
“the Kentish cheese.”

110 FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION

the Flaunders manner, (viz.) under a covert, in which earth is
strawed about 6 inches thick’; ashes, soot, pigeons’ dung,
malt-dust, blood, shavings of horn, woollen rags as used in
Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire, and Kent. It need scarcely be pointed
out that for none of these fertilisers was the agriculturist indebted
to chemistry, and that no attempt was as yet made to restore to
the soil the special properties of which it is impoverished by par-
ticular crops. To meadows and pasture no attention was paid ;
mole-heaps and ant-hills were not spread and levelled ; in laying
down land to graze, little care was taken to sow the best and sweetest
grasses. Clover, sainfoin, and lucerne were generally ignored.
The practice of “ soiling,” that is, of cutting clover green as fodder
for cattle, is, however, commended. Large tracts of land were
allowed to lie waste, so “‘ that there are more waste lands in England
than in all Europe besides, considering the quantity of land.”
Among the waste lands he includes “‘ dry heathy commons.” “I
| know,” he adds, “‘ that poore people will cry out against me because
I call these waste lands: but it’s no matter.”

The destruction of woods for fuel is condemned. For this con-
sumption the glass furnaces of the South, the salt “‘ wiches”’ of
Cheshire, and, above all, the iron-works of Surrey, Sussex, and
other counties, were responsible. The writer probably alludes to
“Dud” Dudley’s experiments, when he expresses the hope that
the difficulties of using “ sea-coal”’ for the smelting of iron might
be overcome so as to save our timber. Experiments were not
sufficiently tried, and a “ Colledge of Experiments,” already recom-
mended by Gabriel Plattes, is once more suggested. Men do not
know where to go if they want advice, or to obtain reliable seeds
and plants. Some means was needed of bringing home to other
husbandmen a knowledge of the improvements made by their more
skilful brethren. Another deficiency in English husbandry was its
insular repugnance to foreign methods and new-fangled crops.
Men objected that the new seeds “‘ will not grow here with us, for
our forefathers never used them. To these I reply and ask them,
how they know? have they tryed? Idlenesse never wants an
excuse ; and why might not our forefathers upon the same ground
have held their hands in their pockets, and have said, that Wheat,
and Barley, would not have grown amongst us?” The same com-
plaint, it may be added, is made by Walter Blith in The English
Improver Improved : ‘‘ The fourth and last abuse is a calumniating

EXAGGERATED PROMISES OF “ RUSTICK AUTHORS” 111

and depraving every new Invention ; of this most culpable are your
mouldy old leavened husbandmen, who themselves and their fore-
fathers have been accustomed to such a course of husbandry as
they will practise, and no other; their resolution is so fixed, no
issues or events whatsoever shall change them. If their neighbour
hath as much corn of one Acre as they of two upon the same land, or
if another plow the same land for strength and nature with two
horses and one man as well as he, and have as good corn, as he hath
been used with four horses and two men yet so he will continue. Or
if an Improvement be discovered to him and all his neighbours, hee’l
oppose it and degrade it. What forsooth saith he, who taught you
more wit than your forefathers?” Seventeenth century farmers
did not lack descendants in later generations. It took a heavy
hammer and many blows to drive a nail through heart of oak.

It would be unjust to lay on agriculturists the whole blame for
neglect of improvements. Much deserves to rest on the agri-
cultural writers themselves. Their promises were often exaggerated
beyond the bounds of belief ; mixed with some useful suggestions
were others which were either ridiculous or of doubtful value. Men
actually and practically engaged in cultivating the soil were, there-
fore, justified in some distrust of book-farmers. Turnips were
undoubtedly an invaluable addition to agricultural resources. But
it was an exaggeration to say with Adolphus Speed ! that they were
the only food for cattle, swine, and poultry, sovereign for con-
ditioning “‘ Hunting dogs,” an admirable ingredient for bread,
affording “‘ two very good crops ”’ each year, supplying “‘ very good
Syder ” and “‘ exceeding good Oyl.” Nor was confidence in Speed’s
advice on other topics likely to be inspired by his promise that land,
rented at £200 a year, might be made to realise a net annual profit
of £2000 by keeping rabbits. Similarly the remedy which is sug-
gested in Hartlib’s Legacie (3rd edition, 1655) “‘ against the Rot,
and other diseases in Sheep and Horses ”’ is enough to cast suspicion
on the whole book: ‘“‘ Take Serpents or (which is better) Vipers,”
advises the writer, ‘‘ cut their heads and tayls off and dry the rest
to powder. Mingle this powder with salt, and give a few grains
of it so mingled now and then to your Horses and Sheep.” Other
suggested remedies are, at least, more easy of application. ‘“‘ The
colicke or pain in the belly (in oxen) is put away in the beholding
of geese in the water, specially duckes.”’ If a horse sickens from

1 Adam out of Eden (1659).

112 FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION

some mysterious ailment, ‘‘a piece of fern-root placed under his
tongue will make him immediately voyde, upward and downward,
whatsoever is in his body, and presently amende.” Again,
neither silkworms nor vineyards, though both are favourites with
the Stewart theorists, commend themselves strongly as a safe
livelihood to practical men who farmed under an English climate.
Nor was it possible to take seriously the proposed introduction of
‘“* Black Foxes, Muske-cats, Sables, Martines,” etc., suggested by
Robert Child, the author of the principal tract in the Legacie, as an
addition to the agricultural wealth of the country. He adds to his
list “the Elephant, the greatest, wisest, and longest-lived of all
beasts . . . very serviceable for carriage (15 men usually riding on
his backe together).”’ It would have added variety to English rural
life to see the partners in a village farm conveyed to their holdings
on the back of a co-operative elephant, and dropping off as they
arrived at their respective strips. But it is doubtful whether they
would have found their four-footed omnibus “ not chargeable to
keepe.” Literary and experimental agriculturists naturally gained
a reputation similar to that of quack medicine vendors. In practice
they often failed. Like ancient alchemists, they starved in the
midst of their golden dreams. Tusser, teaching thrift, never throve.
Gabriel Plattes, the corn setter, died for want of bread. Donald-
son, the author of the first Scottish agricultural treatise, admits
that he took to writing books because he could not succeed on the
land. Even Arthur Young failed twice in farm management before
he began his invaluable tours.

In the “ Large Letter’ on the defects of English farming, and
their remedies, from which quotations have been already made,
Child also notices the amount of land that lay waste from want
of drainage. This was one of the crying needs of agriculture.
Without extensive drainage, the introduction of new crops and
improved practices was impossible. With the hour comes the man.
The necessity and methods of drainage were ably discussed by
Walter Blith. Writing as “a lover of Ingenuity,” he published his
English Improver in 1649. His treatise, interlarded with biblical
quotations, was the first which dealt with draining. As the Puritans
of the day sought Scriptural authority for their political constitu-
tion, so the Puritan farmer justifies his advocacy of drainage by
references to the Bible. ‘‘ Can the rush,” he asks with Bildad,
“‘ grow without mire or the flagg without water ?”’ In other ways

WALTER BLITH i 113

also Blith’s work is significant of the era of the Civil War. He
himself beat his ploughshare into a sword, became a captain in the
Roundhead army, dedicated his second edition under the title of
The English Improver Improved (1652) “to the Right Honourable
the Lord Generall Cromwell,” adorns it with a portrait of himself
arrayed in full military costume, and adds the legend ‘ Vive La Re
Publick.’

Among the remedies which Blith suggests for the defects of
English farming, he urges the employment of more capital ;
enclosures, with due regard to cottiers and labourers ; the abolition
of ‘slavish customs ’”’; the removal of water-mills ; the extinction
of “‘vermine”’; the recognition of tenant-right. It is an indica-
tion of agricultural progress that the question of tenants’ improve-
ments should be thus forcing itself to the front. Sir Richard
Weston in his Discours called attention to the Flemish custom,
unknown to him in England, of “ taking a Farm upon Improvement.”
In Flanders leases for twenty-one years were taken on condition
that “‘ whatsoever four indifferent persons (whereof two to bee
chosen by the one, and two by the other) should judg the Farm to
bee improved at the end of his Leas, the Owner was to paie so much
in value to the Tenant for his improving it.” In the Preface to his
Legacie, Hartlib had imitated Weston in urging the adoption of
this custom in England. Blth, who also quotes the Flemish lease
with approval, points out the injustice of the English law and the
hindrance to all improvements which it created. “If,” he says,
“a Tenant be at never so great paines or cost for the improvement
of his Land, he doth thereby but occasion a greater Rack upon him-
self, or else invests his Land-Lord into his cost and labour gratis,
or at best lies at his Land-Lord’s mercy for requitall; which
occasions a neglect of all good Husbandry.... Now this I
humble conceive may be removed, if there were a Law Inacted, by
which every Land-Lord should be obliged, either to give him
reasonable allowance for his clear Improvement, or else suffer him
or his to enjoy it so much longer as till he hath had a proportionable
requitall.”” The question had not yet become acute; but, with
the insecurity of tenure which then prevailed, it was not surprising
that tenant-farmers were averse to improvements. Their experi-
ence was embodied in the proverbial saying current in Berkshire :

** He that havocs may sit

He that improves must flit.”
H

114 FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION

The same experience inspired the popular saying prevalent in the
Lowlands of Scotland. Donaldson, in his Husbandry Anatomised
(1697) says that, when a tenant improves his land, “the Land-
lord obligeth him either to augment his Rent, or remove, insomuch
that it’s become a Proverb (and I think none more true), Bouch
and Sit, Improve and Flit.”

In treating of drainage, Blith deals not only with surface water
but the constant action of springs and stagnant bottom water. He
urges that no man should attempt to lay out his drains by the eye
alone, but by the aid of “ a true exact Water Levell,” an instrument
which he carefully describes and depicts. No drain, he said, could
touch the “cold spewing moyst water that feeds the flagg and
rush,” unless it was “a yard or four feet deep,” provided with
proper outfalls. The drains were to be filled with elder boughs or
with stones, and turfed over. He insists that they should be cut
straight, not, as open-field farmers were compelled to cut them—
for want of space or from the opposition of their neighbours—with
turns and angles. His views are sound and advanced on general
schemes of drainage, which, for “‘ the commonwealth’s advantage ”
should, he suggests, be enforced by compulsory powers upon land-
owners.

When Blith wrote, the condition of the fens had become a matter
of national importance. It was now that the great work of draining
and reclaiming the drowned district had been for the first time
seriously undertaken on a scale commensurate with the magnitude
of the task. It is singular that foreigners should have taught the
English how to deal, not only with land, but with water. As
farmers, the Low Countries were far in advance of England, and
from them came the most valuable improvements in agricultural
methods, as well as the most useful additions to agricultural
resources. Dutchmen drained our fens ; irrigation, warping, canals
were all foreign importations. The irrigation of meadows, which
M. de Girardin described as a sound insurance against drought, is
said to have been first practised in England in modern times by the
notorious ‘“‘ Horatio Pallavazene,” of Babraham . . . ‘“ who robbed
the Pope to lend the Queen.” Warping was brought from Italy
to the Isle of Axholme in the eighteenth century, and by its means
the deposits at the estuary of the Humber were converted into
‘“‘ nolders.”” The Dutch and Flemings had mastered the secret of
locks and canals long before any attempt was made to render

THE DRAINING OF THE FENS 115

English rivers navigable, or available for water-carriage in inland
districts. The great French “Canal du Midi”? was completed in
1681, nearly a century before the example was followed in England.
In this connection it may be also noticed that~a colony of Walloon
emigrants, settled at Thorney towards the middle of the seventeenth
century, introduced into the district the practice of paring and
burning the coarse tussocks of grass, and the paring plough was
long known as the French plough.

Robert Child in his “Large Letter’? on the most notable
deficiencies of English agriculture, printed in Hartlib’s Legacie (1651),
suggests that the drainage of marshes was not begun till the reign of
Elizabeth. ‘“‘In Qu. Elizabeth’s dayes,” he writes, “‘ Ingenuities,
Curiosities, and Good Husbandry began to take place, and then
Salt Marshes began to be fenced from the Seas.” In this he is
mistaken. Some progress had been made at an earlier date. A
number of Acts were passed in the reign of Henry VIII. for the
reclamation of marshes and fens by undertakers, who were usually
rewarded with half the reclaimed land. Thus Wapping Marsh was
reclaimed by Cornelius Vanderdelf in 1544, and the embankment of
Plumstead and Greenwich Marshes was begun in the same reign.
Isolated marshes had been drained in the eastern counties during
the reign of Elizabeth. Norden (Surveyor’s Dialogue, 1607) says :
‘“much of the Fennes is made lately firme ground, by the skill of
one Captaine Lovell, and by M. William Englebert, an excellent
Ingenor.” But it was not till the reign of Charles I. that any
serious attempt was made to deal with the Great Level of the Fens,
which extended into the six counties of Cambridge, Lincoln, Hunting-
don, Northampton, Suffolk, and Norfolk.

Seventy miles in length, and varying in breadth from ten to
thirty miles, the fens comprised an area of nearly 700,000 acres.
Now a richly fertile, highly cultivated district, it was, in the seven-
teenth century, a wilderness of bogs, pools, and reed-shoals—a
vast morass, from which, here and there, emerged a few islands of
solid earth. Here dwelt an amphibious population, travelling in
punts, walking on stilts, and living mainly by fishing, cutting willows,
keeping geese, and wild-fowling. ‘“‘ H. C.’’ who, in 1629, urged upon
the Government the Drayning of Fennes, paints an unattractive
picture of the country: ‘‘ The Aer Nebulous, Grosse, and full of
rotten Harres; the Water putred and muddy, yea, full of loath-
some Vermine; the Earth spuing, unfast, and boggie; the Fire

116 FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION

noysome turfe and hassocks; such are the inconveniences of the
Drownings.” Eight great principal rivers—the Great Ouse, the
Cam, the Nene, the Welland, the Glen, the Milden-hall or Lark, the
Brandon or Lesser Ouse, and the Stoke or Wissey \—carry the
upland waters through this wide stretch of flat country towards the
sea. Whenever the rains fell, the rivers rose above their banks,
and, especially if the wind was blowing from the east or south,
flooded the country for miles around. It was only in the map that
they reached the ocean at all. Two causes principally contributed
to make the country a brackish swamp. The outfalls of the rivers
had become silted up so that their mouths were choked by many
feet of alluvial deposit.2. Twice every day the tides rushed up the
channels for a considerable distance, forcing back the fresh water,
and converting the whole country into one vast shallow bay.
Efforts had been made by the Romans to reclaim these flat levels,
and their “ causey ”’ is still in existence. In the palmy days of the
great monasteries of Crowland, Thorney, Ely, and Ramsey, isolated
districts were occupied, and highly cultivated. William of Malmes-
bury, writing in the reign of Henry II. (1148), describes the district
round Thorney as ‘“‘a very Paradise in pleasure and delight ; it
resembles heaven itself—it abounds in lofty trees, neither is any
waste place in it; for in some parts there are apple trees, in other
vines which either spread upon the ground or run along poles.”
Such a description applies only to the islands on which the great
monasteries were situated. The rest of the country had become,
at some unknown period of history, an unproductive bog, affording
little benefit to the realm other than fish and fowl, and ‘‘overmuch
harbour to a rude and almost barbarous sort of lazy and beggarly
people.”

No important effort was made to reclaim the district till the time
of John Morton, Bishop of Ely, afterwards a Cardinal and Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, in the reign of Henry VII. As a grower of
strawberries he is enshrined in literature ; but in the history of

1 Sir Jonas Moore, History of the Great Level of the Fennes (1685), p. 9;
Wells, History of the Bedford Level (1830), vol. i. p. 6; Vermuyden, Discourse
touching the Drayning of the Great Fennes (1642), p. 4.

2 Andrewes Burrell, in his Briefe Relation Discovering Plainely the True
Causes why the Great Levell of Fenes ... have been drowned (1642), says that,
when working for the Earl of Bedford in 1635 in deepening “ Wisbeach
River,” he ‘‘ discovered a stony bottome upon which there was found lying

at severall distances seven boates, which for many yeares had laine buried
eight foot under the bottome of the river.”

COMPLETION OF THE FEN DRAINAGE a17

farming his principal achievement was probably suggested by his
residence in Flanders from 1483 to 1485 as a political refugee. A
cut, forty feet wide and four feet deep, running from Peterborough
to Wisbech, still bears the name of ‘‘ Morton’s Leam ”’ and still
plays an important part in the drainage of the country. Other
local efforts were made, which proved for the most part ineffective.
In spite of individual enterprise, the general condition of the district
was so deplorable that it attracted the attention of the Government.
The fens were surveyed, Commissioners and Courts of Sewers
appointed, and an Act (1601) was passed for the drainage of the
Great Level. In 1606, under a local Act, a portion of the Isle of
Ely was reclaimed, the undertakers receiving two-thirds of the land
thus recovered from the water. In 1626 the drainage of Hatfield
Chase, Ditchmarsh, and all the lands through which crept the Idle,
the Aire, and the Don, was commenced by Cornelius Vermuyden.
Three years later, the greater task was attempted of draining that
portion of the fens which was afterwards known as the Bedford
Level. In 1630 the local gentry who formed the Commissioners of
Sewers, contracted with Vermuyden (now Sir Cornelius) to execute
the work, and the fourth Earl of Bedford headed the undertaking.
The work began vigorously enough. In 1637 the Commissioners
of Sewers certified its completion; but the winter rains flooded
the country ; the Earl of Bedford was at the end of his resources ;
he had spent £100,000, and was in danger of losing it all. The
certificate of completion was reversed. Charles I. intervened ;
fresh arrangements were made for the allotment of the recovered
land; a new Company of Adventurers was formed ; Vermuyden
still directed the operations, although his skill was attacked by
Andrewes Burrell in his Briefe Relation (1642). Vermuyden in his
defence (Discourse, 1642) pleaded that the only purpose of the
first Agreement was to make the land “summer ground.” The
new venture was more ambitious. Though the work was partially
suspended during the Civil War, it proceeded under the Common-
wealth. In 1649 the fifth Earl of Bedford joined the undertaking,
and, four years later, the drainage was finished. New channels
and drains were made to carry off the surface water; existing
drains were scoured and straightened ; banks were raised to restrain
the rivers within their beds; new outfalls into the sea, provided
with sluices, were made, and old ones deepened and widened ;
numerous dams were erected to keep out the sea. In 1652 Sir C.

118 FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION

Vermuyden reported the completion of the work to the Council,
saying that “‘ wheat and other grains, besides unnumerable quantities
of sheep, cattle, and other stock were raised, where never had been
any before.”’ The Bedford Level was the largest work undertaken.
It was also the most complete, though even here for a time there
were failures. Other marshes were attacked by improvers, with
more or less success. From various causes, however, the water
often regained its hold on the country. In some cases the work
was only partially finished; in others, it was so inadequately
executed by persons whom Blith calls “‘mountebank engineers,
idle practitioners, and slothful impatient slubberers,” that it broke
down under the rainfall of the first wet season ; in others, the wind-
mills, which were used to raise the water of the interior districts
to the levels of the main rivers, could not cope with a flood; in
others, the works were destroyed by the fenmen, and were not
really restored till the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The marshes were to fenmen what wastes and commons were to
dwellers on their verge. Catching pike and plucking geese were
more attractive than feeding bullocks or shearing sheep. Any
change from desultory industries to the settled labour of agriculture
was in itself distasteful to the commoners, and little, if any, com-
pensation was made for their rights or claims to pasture, turf-
cutting, fishing, or fowling. All over the fen districts there were,
on the one side, outbursts of popular indignation, and, on the
other, complaints of the ‘‘ riotous letts and disturbances of lewd
persons.” The commoners were called to arms by some Tyrtaeus
of the fens, whose doggerel verses have been preserved by Dugdale
in his History of Imbanking and Draining :

Come, brethren of the water, and let us all assemble,
To treat upon this matter which makes us quake and tremble,

For we shall rue it, if’t be true, the Fens be undertaken,
And where we feed in fen and reed, they’ll feed both beef and bacon.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Behold the great design, which they do now determine,

Will make our bodies pine, a prey to crows and vermin ;

For they do mean all fens to drain and waters overmaster ;

All will be dry and we must die, ’cause Essex calves want pasture.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The feathered fowls have wings to fly to other nations,

But we have no such things to help our transportations ;

We must give place (oh grievous case !) to hornéd beasts and cattle,
Except that we can all agree to drive them out by battle.

DESTRUCTION OF THE DRAINAGE WORKS _ 119

Wherefore let us entreat our ancient water nurses

To show their power so great as t’help to drain their purses,

And send us good old Captain Flood to lead us outto battle,

Then Twopenny Jack with skales on’s back will drive out all the cattle.

The Civil Wars gave the fenmen their opportunity. Vermuyden
seems to have been personally unpopular: he was a Zealander ;
most of his workmen were foreigners ; the adventurers who settled
on the lands which they had reclaimed were French or Dutch
Protestants. The commoners, moving swiftly and silently in their
boats, broke down the embankments, fired the mills, filled up the
drains, levelled the enclosures, turned their cattle into the standing
corn. They attacked the workmen, threw some of them into the
river, held them under the water with poles, and burnt their tools.
The perpetrators of the outrages worked so secretly that they could
rarely be identified. Sometimes their action was bold and open.
In the neighbourhood of Hatfield Chase, near the Isle of Axholme,
every day for seven weeks, gangs of commoners, armed with mus-
kets, drew up the flood-gates so as to let in the flowing tide, and at
every ebb shut the sluices, threatening that they ‘“‘ would stay till
the whole level was well drowned, and the inhabitants forced to
swim away like ducks.” Even the religion of the French and
Dutch Protestants was not respected. From Epworth in 1656
comes their petition that the fenmen had made their church a
slaughter-house and a burying-place for carrion. Major-General
Whalley was entrusted by Parliament with the task of protecting
the adventurers. But agitators like Lilburne and Noddel were at
work among his soldiers, and the commoners showed no respect
for the authority of Parliament. “They could make as good a
Parliament themselves ; it was a Parliament of clouts.’’ In some
cases the resistance of the fenmen secured them further concessions ;
in others they succeeded in destroying the works of the under-
takers. It was not till after 1714 that the riots caused by the
reclamation ceased to disturb the peace of the country. By that
time the object was partially achieved, and many of the swamps
and marshes of the fen districts were restored to the ague-shivering,
fever-stricken inhabitants in their primitive unproductiveness.

The struggle for the reclamation of the waste-lands of the water-
drowned fens is another aspect of the older land-battle between
enclosers and commoners. Men like Robert Child in his Large
Letter in Hartlib’s Legacie, or Walter Blith, championed reclamation

120 FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION

for the same reasons that they advocated enclosures. The former,
writing in 1650 before the drainage was complete, speaks of “ that
great Fen of Lincolneshire, Cambridge, Hungtingdon, consisting, as
I am Informed, of 380,000 Acres, which is now almost recovered.”
“Very great, therefore,’ he continues, “is the improvement of
draining of lands, and our negligence very great, that they have
been waste so long, and as yet so continue in divers places: for the
improving of a Kingdome is better than the conquering a new
one.” Blith, writing three years later (English Improver Improved,
1652), speaks of the work as finished. ‘“ As to the Drayning, or
laying dry the Fenns,”’ he says, “‘ those profitable works, the Com-
mon-wealths glory, let not Curs Snarl, nor dogs bark thereat, the
unparralleld advantages of the World.” But when these and
other writers of the period dealt with enclosures, they treated the
subject from a new point of view. As a matter of farming, their
arguments were sound. But economic gain might involve social
and moral loss, and the Stewart writers on agriculture tried to recon-
cile the two aspects of the question. In the interests of agricultural
progress, they are practically unanimous in their advocacy of indi-
vidual as opposed to common occupation of arable land. But in the
case of commons of pasture, they vigorously defended the claims of
the commoners, both tenant-farmers and cottagers. More advanced
members of the Republican party went beyond the recognition of
pasture rights, and claimed the common, not for the open-field
farmers to whose arable holdings it was historically attached, but
for the general public—irrespective of claims arising from neighbour-
hood or from the tillage of adjacent land. On the practical assertion
of such claims a curious side-light is thrown by the proceedings of
Jerrard Winstanley in 1649.

Winstanley and his friends sought to establish a society having
all things in common. With this object they settled on the common
lands of St. George’s Hill, near Walton-on-Thames, and began to
plough, cultivate, and enclose the land. Lord Fairfax’s soldiers
burned their huts, and turned them off. Winstanley, in the jargon
of the day, identified the struggle, in which his personal profits
were staked, with the prophetic Armageddon “ between the Lamb
of Righteousness . . . and the Dragon of Unrighteousness.”’ Need-
less to say, he found himself a champion of the former. He sets
forth his claims in a pamphlet addressed to the General as A Letter
to the Lord Fairfax and his Council of War: . .. Proving it an

A COMMUNISTIC SOCIETY 121

undeniable Equity That the Common People ought to dig, plow, plant,
and dwell wpon the Commons, without hiring them or paying Rent to
any. He was, he says, opposed by none save “ one or two covetous
freeholders that would have all the commons to themselves, and
that would uphold the Norman tyranny over us, which by the
victory that you have got over the Norman successor is plucked
up by the roots and therefore ought to be cast away.’ In other
words, the effect of the Civil War and of the defeat of Charles I., as
interpreted by his school of thought, was to establish the rights of
the people to ‘‘ have the land freed from the entanglement of lords,
lords of manors, and landlords, which are our taskmasters,’”’ “ to
enter on their inheritance,” and “dig, plow, plant and dwell upon the
Commons ” without rent, and improve them ‘“ for a public treasury
and livelihood.” Instead of the existing law, the rule was to be
established of “‘ First come, first served.” For this appropriation
and improvement of the commons the inspiration of the “ Lamb
of Righteousness ”’ was claimed, so long as the new possessors were
Winstanley and his communistic society ; but the same processes
were the direct suggestion of the “‘ Dragon of Unrighteousness,”’ if
the work was carried out by the adjacent owners and cultivators
of the soil. In either case, whoever was the encloser, the general
public gained no advantage ; the pasture commons were ploughed,
enclosed, and appropriated to individuals.

The episode is significant. Probably Winstanley had, and has,
sympathisers. But the views of those practical agriculturists, who
were interested in the enclosure and tillage of open-fields and
commons in order to accelerate farming progress, were less revolu-
tionary. Had they been carried into effect, much social loss might
have been averted. From the purely commercial side, their argu-
ments in favour of converting open-field land into separate holdings
and of enclosing the commons and wastes were overwhelming.
There need be no depopulation, for tillage would be increased. If
the rights of commoners were respected, the social drawbacks to
the change might be removed. The whole question was assuming
a new form. The improvements in arable farming suggested by
Stewart and Commonwealth writers minimised the social loss caused
by enclosures, at the same time that they magnified the economic
waste of the open-field system. :

Tudor farmers had treated arable and pasture farming as two
distinct branches, which could not be combined. On open-field

122 FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION

land, though some live-stock was maintained by means of commons,
the energies of farmers were almost exclusively concentrated on
corn. On enclosed land, corn might be comparatively relegated
to the background, and the farmer’s mainstays were meat, dairy
produce, and, if a flock-master, wool. So long as this rigid dis-
tinction was maintained, enclosures often meant depopulation and
a dwindling wheat-area. Experience was crystallised into the
proverb ‘“ No balks, no corn.” It is true that, towards the end
of Elizabeth’s reign, the advantages which enclosures gave to the
enterprise of the arable farmer were realised, and land began to be
fenced off, not for pasture only, but also for tillage. But the
economic case for enclosures was enormously strengthened, when the
real pivots of mixed husbandry were discovered, and when Stewart
agriculturists found that neither turnips, nor clover, nor artificial
grasses, nor potatoes, nor drainage, were possible on open-fields
which were held in common for half the year. Yet the experience
of the previous two hundred years had created a mass of well-
founded prejudice, which fought stubbornly against any extension
of the practice of enclosing land. It is for this reason, probably,
that the best writers of the Stewart and Commonwealth period
labour hard to prove that enclosures of open-fields and commons,
whatever their past history had been, necessitated neither depopula-
tion nor decay of tillage, and might even promote not only economic
but social gain.

In his Book of Surveying (1523) Fitzherbert had written on the
way ‘“‘to make a township that is worth 20 marks a year worth
£20 a year.” His plan was to discover, first, how many acres of
arable land each man occupied in the open-fields, how much meadow,
and what propcrtion of common pasture were attached to his hoild-
ing; and secondly, by means of exchange, to consolidate these
lands, lay them together, and enclose them in several occupation.
Every man should have “ one little croft or close next to his house.”
In the Briefe Examination (1549) the Doctor, who represents the
author’s views, only condemns those enclosures of land which were
made for the conversion of tillage into pasture, or “ without
recompence of them that have right to comen therein.” It was
on this principle that in 1545 the Royal wastes of Hounslow Heath
were enclosed under the award of Commissioners, who set out a
portion of the heath to each inhabitant ; either as copyholds, or
on leases for terms of years.

“THREE ACRES AND A COW” 123

Sentiments like these became the commonplaces-of Stewart and
Commonwealth writers. The demand for “three acres and a
cow ”’ can show an origin of respectable antiquity. Gabriel Plattes
(1639) ! pleads that all parties would gain by enclosures, landowners
by increased rents, clergymen by improved tithes, the poor by
increased employment. “I could wish,” he adds, “ that in every
Parish where Commons are inclosed, a corner might be laid to the
poore mens houses, that every one might keep a Cow or for the
maintenance of his familie two.” The wish of the Stewart writer
had been expressed by a Tudor predecessor a century earlier.
Thomas Becon? in 1540 had suggested that landlords should
attach to every cottage enough “ land to keep a cow or two.” Walter
Blith * argues vigorously in favour of enclosures, and quotes with
approval the whole of Tusser’s poem comparing “ champion ”’
(open) and “ severall”’ land. Of open-field farmers he says “ live
they do indeed, very many in a mean, low condition, with hunger
and care. Better do those in Bridewell. And for the best of
them, they live as uncomfortably, moyling and toyling and drudg-
ing. What they get they spend.” But in all enclosures he expressly
makes the condition that all interests should be provided for—not
only those of the landlord, but those also of the ‘‘ Minister to the
People,” the ‘‘ Freeholder Farmer or Tenant,’ and the “ Poor
Labourer or Cottier.” All these, he says, would gain by the process.
He takes the last first: ‘“‘ Look what right or Interest he hath in
Common, I'll first allot out his proportion into severall with the
better rather than with the worse, a Proportion out of everyman’s
inheritance.” At the same time he condemns “ depopulating
Inclosure . . . such as former oppressive times by the will and
power of some cruell Lord either through his greatness or purchased
favour at Court, or in the Common Courts of England, by his purse
and power could do anything, inclose, depopulate, destroy, ruine all
Tillage, and convert all to pasture without any other Improvement
at all . . . which hath brought men to conceive, that because men
did depopulate by Enclosure, therefore it is now impossible to
enclose without Depopulation.”’

To the same effect as Blith writes Robert Child in the “ Large

14 Discovery of Infinite Treasure, Hidden since the World's Beginning, by
G(abriel) P(lattes), 1639.

* The Jewel of Joy, 1540.
3 English Improver Improved, ed. 1653.

124 FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION

Letter” in Hartlib’s Legacie (1651). He regards wastes and
commons as defects in English husbandry, and in defence of his
position asks eight questions, which he does not attempt to answer,
preferring to leave “‘ the determination for wiser heads.”’

1. ‘‘ Whether or no these lands might not be improved very much
by the Husbandry of Flaunders (viz.) by sowing Flax, Turneps, great
Clover-Grasse, if that Manure be made by folding Sheepe after the
Flaunders way, to keepe it in heart ?

2. “‘ Whether the Rottennesse and Scabbinesse of Sheepe, Murrein
of Cattel, Diseases of horses, and in general all diseases of Cattel
do not especially proceed from Commons ?

3. “If the rich men, who are able to keepe great stockes are not
great gainers by them ?

4. “Whether Commons do not rather make poore, by causing
idlenesse than maintaine them: and such poor, who are trained
up rather for the Gallowes or beggery, than for the Commonwealths
service ?

5. “ How it cometh to passe, that there are fewest poore, where
there are fewest Commons, as in Kent, where there is scarce 6 Com-
mons in the County of a considerable greatnesse ? 1

6. ““ How many do they see enriched by the Commons: and if
their Cattel be not usually swept away by the Rot, or starved in
some hard winters ?

7. “‘ If that poore men might not imploy 2 Acres enclosed to more
advantage, than twice as much in a Common ?

** And lastly, if that all Commons were enclosed, and part given to
the Inhabitants, and part rented out, for a stock to set the poore
on worke in every County.”

Blith not only quoted Tusser in support of his opinion, but adds
that “all that ever I yet saw or read” held the same opinion.
‘““ Tis true I have met with one or two small Pieces, as M. Spriggs,
and another whose name I remember not, that write against depopu-
lating Inclosure, with whom I freely joyn and approve.” It is
probable that he alludes to Henry Halhead’s Inclosure Thrown Open
ete. (1650), to which Joshua Sprigge of Banbury contributed a

1Tusser held the same opinion that poverty and commons go together.
In his comparison between ‘‘ Champion Country and Severall’”’ he writes :

**T’one barefoot and ragged doth go
And ready in winter to starve ;
When t’other you see not do so,
But hath that is needful to serve.”

THE CASE AGAINST ENCLOSURES 125

Preface. The tract is an appeal against enclosures, mainly based
on past history. It probably belongs to a group of pamphlets
dealing with the Midland counties, where the enclosing movement
seems to have been active. Halhead describes how would-be
enclosers begin by upsetting the field customs by which the cultiva-
tion of the land was regulated ; how they tell the people that they
will be three times as well off, that enclosure stops strife and con-
tention, “‘nourisheth Wood in hedges,’ and keeps sheep from
rotting. If they cannot prevail by these promises, they begin a
suit at law, and make the resisters dance attendance at the law-
courts for months and even years. Then they pull out their purses,
and offer to buy them out. If this fails, on goes the suit till a decree
against the open-field partners is granted in Chancery. The
description bears the stamp of accuracy. But, logically, neither
the old methods of enclosing nor the results of the conversion of
tillage into pasture really met the case put forward by the new
advocates of enclosure as an instrument both of social and
agricultural progress.

The case for enclosures of open-field farms and commons is
vigorously stated in three tracts ; one by 8S. Taylor (1652) ; + another
by Adam Moore (1653) ; 2 the third by Joseph Lee (1656).2 Their
arguments are mainly based on the wretched conditions of the
commons, the poor farming of open-field land, and the social and
agricultural gain which, as Lee’s practical experience had shown,
resulted from individual occupation. None of the three authors
alludes to the recent discoveries of roots, clover, and grasses, or to
the improved methods of drainage, on which Blith and others so
strongly relied. Of Taylor nothing is known, except that his tract
shows him to have been a vehement assailant of ale-houses. Moore
tells us that he was a Somersetshire man. The Rev. Joseph Lee
was a Leicestershire ‘‘ Minister of the Gospel” at Cotesbach, who
had been violently attacked by his professional brethren for the

1 Common Good: or the Improvement of Commons, Forests, and Chases by
Inclosure, by 8. T(aylor), 1652.

2 Bread for the Poor . . . Promised by Enclosure of the Wastes and Common
Grounds of England, by Adam Moore, Gent. 1653.

3 Kiratia rod ’Aypoi; or a Vindication of a Regulated Enclosure, etc., by
Joseph Lee, Minister of the Gospel, 1656.

The contrary view to that taken by Lee was stated by John Moore, Minister
of Knaptoft in Leicestershire, whose tract The Crying Sin of England of not
Caring for the Poor, etc., was published in 1653. Moore’s Scripture Word
against Inclosure (1656) was an answer to Lee.

126 FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION

share he had himself taken in the enclosure of Catthorp Common.
In his Epistle to the Reader he explains why he preferred to reply
to these attacks by a tract and not by a sermon: ‘“‘I am very
sensible that if our pulpits had sounded more of the things of
Christ, and lesse of the things of the world, it had been better with
us then it is this day.” Part of the tract consists of hard text-
fighting ; but its value lies in the facts which he quotes from his
own experience.

Enclosures, in the opinion of the three writers, are not only
“Jawfull’? but ‘“laudable.”” They injure none, but profit all.
Lee considers that five classes ought to be considered, landlords,
ministers, the poor, cottagers, and tenant-farmers. Moore omits
the ministers, but asserts the claims of the remaining four classes.
All three writers agree that a certain portion of the Commons ought
to be set aside for the poor, and the rest proportionately divided.
This, says Lee, was the principle adopted at Catthorp. If this
were done, there need be no depopulation. In proof Lee mentions
a number of parishes in Leicestershire, where the land had been
enclosed without any decay of population, houses, or tillage.
Neither would it lead to any diminution of useful employment.
The same number of maid-servants would be employed; and
though there might be fewer lads, they would be more useful
citizens if set to some trade. On the industrial gain thus derived
from enclosures the three authors are also agreed. They in effect
answer the fourth question asked by Robert Child in the “ Large
Letter’ in Hartlib’s Legacie with an unhesitating affirmative. At
the beginning of the century, Norden (1607) had drawn attention
to the character of the squatters who settled on the edges of wastes
and commons. He describes them as “ people given to little or
no labour, living very hardly with oaten bread and sour whey and
goat’s milk, dwelling far from any church or chapel, . . . as ignorant
of God or of any civil course of life as the very savages among the
infidels, in a manner which is lamentable and fit to be reformed by
the lord of the manor.” Fifty years later, according to the three
authors, commons were blots on the social life of the nation.
Children, says Taylor, are “ brought up Lazying upon a Common
to attend one Cow and a few sheep,” and “ being nursed up in
idleness in their youth they become indisposed for labor, and then
begging is their portion or Theevery their Trade. ... The two
great Nurseries of Idlenesse and Beggery etc. are Ale-houses and

THE CASE FOR ENCLOSURES 127

Commons.” Taylor says that “ people are nowhere-more penurious
than such as border on commons.” “ This poverty,” he explains,
“is due to God’s displeasure at the idleness of the Borderers,” or
commoners. They have no settled industry. They look to the
profits of a horse or cow. if they can keep one; if not, they can at
least ““ compass a goose or a swine.” If they have no live-stock at
all, they are “‘ sure of furze, fern, bushes, or cowdung, for fuel to
keep them warm in winter.’’ They can beguile, writes Moore, the
“silly Woodcock and his feathered fellows by tricks and traps of
their own painful framing,’ and so gain money enough to keep them
till they have to work again. Sometimes they earn a few shillings
by guarding the flocks and herds of others. But, if a sheep or a cow
is missing, the “ chuck-fists ”’ will not pay them their wage, but
suspect them of theft, and proceed against them by law. The
Commons are, in fact, ‘‘ Nurseries of Thieves and Horse-stealers.”’
Lee is of the same opinion that commons fostered idleness.
Perhaps, he admits, “3 or 4 shepherd boyes ”’ by enclosures “ will
be necessitated to lay aside that idle employment; . . . destructive
to the soules of those Lads, in that, poor creatures, they are brought
up by this means without either civill or religious education.”
When they should have been at school or at church, they were
‘“ playing at nine-holes under a bush,” while their cattle make a
prey on their neighbour’s corn, and ‘‘ they themselves are made a
prey to Satan.” Other moral gains are alleged that by enclosure
an end is put to occasions for litigation and strife between
common-field farmers, or for quarrels between herdsmen, and that
there are fewer opportunities for pilferings of land and of corn, or
for the destruction of a neighbour’s crops by turning in horses and
cattle under pretence that they have broken loose from their
tethers.

It is not true, in the opinion of the three writers, that enclosures
necessarily destroy tillage. On the contrary, the cheapness and
abundance of corn are due to the opportunities that enclosures
afford for breaking up worn-out pastures which yield double the
quantities produced on common fields. Nor is it true that enclosers
are under a curse so that the land passes out of their families.
Instances to the contrary are adduced from Leicestershire, and that
cannot be a special curse on enclosures which is a fate common to
all other landholders. Enclosure may diminish the number of
horses ; but one horse well kept is worth three so “‘ jaded and tyred

128 FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION

as are the horses of common-field farmers.’’ Nor is it any tyranny
for the majority to enforce enclosure where the whole body of
partners are not unanimous. At Catthorp one man with common
for seven sheep stood out. The rest overruled him; but he lost
nothing. All that the other commoners did was to enclose their
portions of the common away from him. That the agricultural
gain is great, scarcely admits of a doubt. On open-fields the corn-
land is worn out. It can only be induced to bear at all by constant
ploughings and liberal manurings, which absorb all profits in labour
and charges. Even then there is often little more than a bare
return of seed, poor in quality—‘‘ small humble-Bee-Ears with
little grains.”” The pease land is no better ; it may provide enough
for seed and keep of the horses ; but it yields no clear profit. The
live-stock that are reared on the commons are dwarfed and under-
sized ; they are driven long distances to and fro, so that they have
neither rest nor quiet. Colts, raised on the commons, by cold and
famine come to no good. ‘Cattle, nurtured there, grow to such
brockish and starved stature ”’ that, living, they grieve the owner’s
eye, and, dead, deceive the Commonwealth. Sheep do better; but
they even are so pinched that they make little profit. One sheep
in an enclosure is worth two on a common. There are five rots in
the open-fields to one rot in enclosed land. The commons are
over-stocked. They are, says Moore, ‘“‘ Pest-houses of disease for
cattle. Hither come the Poor, the Blinde, Lame, Tired, Scabbed,
Mangie, Rotten, Murrainous.”” No order is kept ; but milch cows,
young beasts, sheep, horses, swine—often unringed—and geese are
turned out together. Furze and heath are encouraged by com-
moners, because they keep cattle and sheep alive in hard winter
when fodder is scarce; but the same space covered with grass
would be more useful. That which is every man’s is no man’s,
and no one tries to better the commons. When it is everybody’s
interest to improve the pasture, it is nobody’s business to do the
work.

The whole subject of enclosures had yet to be fought out. From
the point of view of production, the change was desirable; no
pressure of population as yet made it necessary. Commons were
essential to the existence of those open-field farms, which advocates
of agricultural improvement recognised as an obstacle to pro-
gress; but new methods and new resources had as yet hardly
advanced beyond theories. Neither the argument from increased

ALTERED TONE RESPECTING ENCLOSURES — 129

productiveness, nor the appeal for progress, had-gained their full
force. Yet the altered tone of agricultural writers is significant.
It was almost as incontestably in favour of enclosure as the tone
of Elizabethan writers had been opposed to the process. Generalisa-
tion from handfuls of particular instances is always easy. A
large tract of country might have been improved and enclosed with
the approval of all parties. But there were the widest differences
between commons, or between commons and moors, wastes, and
bogs. Moore himself reserves his bitterest condemnation for what
he calls ‘‘ marish,’’ as opposed to “ uplandish,’”’ commons. Stress
might be laid on the moral influences of common land either way,
and self-interest or bias is always prone to conceal itself under the
mask of moral motives. The same rights might encourage industry
and thrift, or idleness and crime. It was doubtless illogical to argue
that enclosures must always depopulate, whether the change was
effected with or without regard to the claims of cottagers and small
commoners, or for the purpose of increasing the area either of
tillage or of pasture. Yet those who had suffered from enclosures
were not unjustified in the conclusion that history would repeat
itself. Whichever way the question was ultimately decided, it
could not fail to affect the condition of the rural population for
better or for worse, and to affect it profoundly. Unfortunately
the decision was made, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
under an economic pressure which completely overrode the social
considerations that should have controlled and modified the process
of enclosure.

CHAPTER VI.

THE LATER STEWARTS AND THE REVOLUTION.
1660-1700.

Worlidge’s Systema Agriculturae (1669): improvements suggested by agri-
cultural writers; tyranny of custom; contempt for book-farming ; slow
progress in farming skill; general standard low; horses, cattle, sheep,
and pigs in the seventeenth century ; want of leaders; growing influence
of landowners; the finance of the Restoration, and the abolition of
military tenures; legislation to promote agriculture; Gregory King on
the State and Condition of England and Wales in 1696: the distribution
of population and wealth.

THE practical improvements, which had been suggested by “ Rustick
Authors ” in the first sixty years of the seventeenth century, were
collected by John Worlidge in his Systema Agriculturae (1669).
Five editions of this “ first systematic treatise on farming ”’ show
that it was for some time regarded as a standard authority. Free
from the extravagant promises of his predecessors, Worlidge sum-
marises their most useful recommendations. Inordinate space is
still allotted to such topics as trees, orchards, “ garden tyllage,”’
bees, and silkworms, which occupy 106 pages out of a total number
of 217. On the side of stock-breeding and stock-rearing his book
remains especially defective. For information on this subject he
merely refers readers in a general way to other writers. Three
pages only are devoted to the section “ Of Beasts,” in which the
special qualities required for the different uses of horses, cattle,
and sheep are wholly ignored ; only in the case of dogs does Wor-
lidge appear to recognise the variety of purposes for which animals
are bred.

Even the most practical work on farming which was published
in the seventeenth century is ill-balanced and defective. Yet it
is remarkable how many of the triumphs of nineteenth century
farming were anticipated by these early writers, a century and a

PREPARATIONS FOR AGRICULTURAL ADVANCE 131

half before the improvements were generally adopted. Already
the germs of a proper rotation of crops had been implanted, and a
few advanced husbandmen, familiar with the methods of the Low
Countries, had realised that, in roots and clovers, they commanded
the means, not only of keeping more stock, but of increasing the
yield of corn. Already some of the drawbacks of broad-cast
sowing had been pointed out, and the advantages of setting in
regular rows suggested. Already the foreign use of oil-cake for
cattle had been observed and recommended to English farmers.
But, as Mortimer + notices, Lincolnshire farmers, after pressing out
the “‘oyl”’ from their coleseed, preferred to ‘“‘ burn the cakes to
heat their Ovens.” Already also the field-cultivation of potatoes
had been suggested, and it is a coincidence that the suggestion was
made only a few years after the drainage of those fens, on the clover-
sick soil of which, two centuries and a half later, the adoption of
the crop worked a revolution. Already the use of silos and of
ensilage, the storage of water in tanks for dry districts, the value
of coverings to rick-stands, even the utility of the incubator for
rearing poultry—a box heated by a candle or a lamp—had been
urged on Stewart agriculturists. In a tentative fashion the “ Rus-
tick Authors” were feeling after improved agricultural machinery.
Googe’s reaping car, the double-furrow plough of the “ ingenious
yeoman of Kent,” Plattes’ corn-setter, the corn drill depicted by
Worlidge, which made the furrow, sowed the seed, and deposited
the manure, were the ancestors of many useful inventions. Still
more vaguely Stewart writers were looking for the aid of science.
Its future benefits could not, of course, be foreseen. But the
demand for an Agricultural College, the recognition of the work
of the Royal Society, the study of such books as Willis’ De fermenta-
tione or Glauber’s Miraculum Mundi, in which an attempt was
made to analyse the elements that contribute to vegetation, show
that expectations had been aroused. Already a Land Registry,
by which land could be made to pass as freely as money, had been
suggested by Andrew Yarranton. Already also the abolition of
“slavish customs,’ and of “Jil Tenures as Copyhold, Knight-
Service etc,” which “‘ much discourage Improvements and are (as
I suppose) Badges of our Norman Slavery” was demanded. The
Hares and Rabbits legislation had been foreshadowed in the out-

1 The whole Art of Husbandry ; or the Way of Managing and Improving of
Land (1707).

132. LATER STEWARTS AND THE REVOLUTION

cry against the destruction of growing crops by “ coneys,” and
hares which in 1696, according to Gregory King’s minute calcula-
tion, numbered 24,000. The necessity for General Highway and
Enclosure Acts had been urged on the country. The prelude to
the long struggle for compensation for unexhausted improvements
had been sounded. Even the twentieth century agitation for pure
bread had been anticipated in the protest that ‘‘ the corruption of
the best aliments, as bread, and which are in most use with us,
causeth the worst Epidemicall Diseases.”

Here and there some changes in farming practices had been made
for the better. But such progress was purely local, and rarely
survived the individual by whom it was effected. Traditional
methods were jealously guarded as agricultural heirlooms. Even
ocular proof of the superior advantages derived from improvements
failed to drive the John Trot geniuses of farming from the beaten
track in which their ancestors had plodded. Circumstances com-
bined to render the force of custom tyrannical. The agrarian
partnerships on village farms opposed a natural obstacle to change.
On open-fields, where the rotations of crops were fixed by imme-
morial usage, based on the common rights of the whole body of
associated farmers, no individual could move hand or foot to effect
improvements. Unless a large number of joint occupiers, often
ignorant, suspicious, and prejudiced, agreed to forgo common
rights and adopt turnips and clover, it was impossible to introduce
their cultivation. The enterprise of twenty farmers might be
checked by the apathy or caution of one. It was for this reason
mainly that Worlidge addresses his treatise to the “ gentry and
yeomanry,”’ and that he thinks the moment opportune for improve-
ment, because so many farmers had been obliged to give up their
holdings owing to “ the great Plenty and Smallness of Value of the
Ordinary Productions of the Earth,” which left no profit to those
who “exercised onely the Vulgar Methods of Agriculture.” Even
if the new materials for agricultural wealth were successfully intro-
duced by some energetic landlord or tenant on an enclosed farm,
the result of the experiment was rarely known beyond the im-
mediate neighbourhood. Each village was at once isolated and
self-sufficing. Communication was difficult; frequented roads
were often impassable except for a well-mounted horseman or a
coach drawn by eight horses. Education had not spread to the
class to which farmers generally belonged. Letters were rarely

ISOLATION OF VILLAGES 133

interchanged. Visits were seldom paid. The only form in which
information could be disseminated was in books or pamphlets, and
in remote villages buyers were few or none. Newspapers had
hardly begun to exist. The first attempt to found a scientific
agricultural paper was made by John Houghton, whose Collection
of Letters for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade appeared
in a weekly series from 1681 to 1683, and again from 1692
to 1703. It is improbable that the circulation could have been
extensive even among the wealthiest of the country gentry.
Rumours of the progress of the outside world scarcely penetrated
to distant villages. Farmers of one district knew little more of
the practices of the next than they did of those of Kamchatka.
Beyond the limited range of their horizon, their neighbours were
only

** Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.”

In this extreme isolation must be sought a fruitful cause for the
slow diffusion of agricultural improvements. Another cause lay
in the absence of any strong incentive to raise more produce from
the soil than was requisite for the immediate wants of the producers.
Markets were, in many parts of England, not only difficult of access
but few in number. From vast and crowded haunts of labour
and trade the cry of the artisan had not yet arisen for bread and
meat. As soon as the farmer had satisfied the needs of himself,
his family, and his rent, his work was done. Till a wider demand
for agricultural produce had been created by the rapid growth of
population which resulted from the development of manufacturing
industries, and till the new markets had been brought to the
farmer’s door by improved means of communication, the supply
was mainly regulated by the wants of the producer himself.
Another cause for the neglect of improvements has been already
mentioned. A contempt for book-farmers, which was not wholly
unjustifiable, partially explains the slow adoption of new methods
and new crops. Of this class of agricultural writers, Thomas
Tryon affords an interesting example. Like most men of his kind,
he was a “‘ Jack of all trades.””’ He was a voluminous writer on a
miscellaneous variety of subjects—against drinking brandy and
‘“smoaking tobacco,’’ upon brewing ale and beer, upon medical
topics, upon dreams and visions, on the benefit of clean beds, on
the generation of bugs, on the pain in the teeth. He also com-

134 LATER STEWARTS AND THE REVOLUTION

‘ 2

posed a “short discourse” of a Pythagorean and a mystic. His
agricultural book, The Countryman’s Companion (1681), is chiefly
noticeable for its account of that ‘“‘ Monsterous, Mortifying Dis-
temper, the Rot,” and for the strange remedies which he suggests
for the preservation of sheep from that disorder. Thomas Tryon
is an admirable representative of the class of writers who brought
the book-farmer into disrepute. But already true science was
coming to the aid of agriculture. The Sylva (1664) and Terra (1676)
of John Evelyn are known to all well-zead agriculturists, and John
Ray’s Catalogus Plantarum Angliae (1670) marks an epoch in the
history of botanical science.

All these conditions combined to raise formidable obstacles to
the diffusion of improvements in farming. Agricultural writers
scarcely expected that the changes they suggested would be adopted.
Donaldson, for instance, says that people will probably answer him
with “‘ Away with your fool Notions; there are too many Bees in
your Bonet-case. We will satisfie ourselves with such Measures as
our Fathers have followed hitherto.” Farmers, says Hartlib’s
Legacie, did not venture to attempt innovations lest they should
be called ‘‘ projectors.”” Bradley, Professor of Botany at Cambridge,
complains in his Complete Body of Husbandry (1727), that if he were
to advise farmers ‘“‘ about improvements, they will ask me whether
I can hold a plough, for in that they think the whole mystery of
husbandry consists.”’ It was long before clover emerged “‘ from the
fields of gentlemen into common use”; it did not penetrate into
Suffolk villages till the eighteenth century. In Worcestershire
and adjoining districts the personal efforts of Andrew Yarranton
in 1653-77 had for the time established its use. But “ farmers,”
says Jethro Tull, writing in the reign of George II., “if advised to
sow clover would certainly reply, ‘Gentlemen might sow it if they
pleased, but they (the farmers) must take care to pay their rents.’ ”
Even more obstinate was the resistance to turnips. It was of little
use that Worlidge in his Systema (1669) urged upon farmers the
cultivation of roots ; or that Reeve (1670) reprinted Weston’s advice
to use turnips as the best methods of improving “ barren and heathy
land’ ; or that Houghton (1684) described the benefits which had
resulted in Norfolk and Essex from growing them as winter food
for sheep. Even their advocates had not yet appreciated the full
value of roots. Worlidge 1 in 1683 had observed that “‘ sheep fatten

1 Houghton’s Collections on Husbandry and Trade (ed. 1728), vol. iv. p. 142.

SLOW ACCEPTANCE OF NEW CROPS 135

very well on turnips, which prove an excellent ‘hourishment for
them in hard winters, when fodder is scarce ; for they will not only
eat the greens, but feed on the roots in the ground, and scoop them
hollow even to the very skin.” Houghton! in 1694 writes that
“Some in Essex have their fallow after turneps, which feed their
sheep in winter, by which means their turneps are scooped, and so
made capable to hold dews and rain water which, by corrupting,
imbibes the nitre of the air, and when the shell breaks, it runs about
and fertilizes. By feeding the sheep, the land is dung’d as if it
had been folded ; and these turneps, tho’ few or none be carried
off for human use, are a very excellent improvement ; nay, some
reckon it so, tho’ they only plough the turneps in, without
feeding.”’ They made but slow progress. Sir John Cullum, in his
History of the Manor of Hawsted, preserves the name of Michael
Houghton as the first man in that Suffolk parish, who about 1700
raised a crop of turnips on two acres of his land. ‘I introduced
turnips into the field,” says Tull, “in King William’s reign ; but
the practice did not travel beyond the hedges of my estate till after
the Peace of Utrecht ”’ (1713). Potatoes were even less successful.
John Forster (1664) had, as has been already noticed, urged their
adoption as a field crop. Houghton notices that they had been
brought from Ireland ‘‘ to Lancashire, where they are very numerous,
and now they begin to spread all the Kingdom over. They are a
pleasant food boiled or roasted, and eaten with butter and sugar.” ?
But Mortimer (Whole Art of Husbandry, etc., 1707) despised them
even in the garden as “ very near the Nature of the Jerusalem
Artichoak, which is not so good or wholesome. These are planted
either of the Roots or Seeds, and may probably be propagated in
great Quantities, and prove a good food for Swine.” Neither
clover nor turnips became general in England before the latter
half of the eighteenth century, and potatoes were not extensively
grown till fifty years later, when their value was urged on the
country by the Board of Agriculture.

The widest differences existed between the farming of various
districts. The general level was extremely low. But in individual
cases a high standard was attained, and the best possible use made
of such resources as agriculturists could command. In natural
fertility the Vale of Taunton, which Norden calls the “ Paradise of
England,” was pre-eminent. The best pastures, according to the

1 Ibid. vol. i. p. 213. 2 Collections, etc. vol. ii. p. 469.

136 LATER STEWARTS AND THE REVOLUTION

same authority, were at Crediton and Welshpool. In arable
farming, says Mascall, or his editor, Ruscam, the seasons for the
operations of agriculture, as well as the choice of implements must
depend on the character of the soil. Thus on the “ stiffe clayes of
Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire,’ on ‘ mixt soils
that are good and fruitful, as Northamptonshire, Hartfordshire, most
parts of Kent, Essex, Barkshire,” on “light and dry grounds which
have also a certain natural fruitfulness in them as in Norfolk,
Suffolk, most parts of Lincolnshire, Hampshire and Surrey ”’—
farmers will adapt themselves to circumstances. On “ the barren
and unfruitful earths, as in Devonshire, Cornwall, many parts of
Wales, Darbyshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, Yorkshire,’ they must
profit by experience. ‘“‘ The best corn land in Europe,” in the
opinion of Gabriel Plattes, was the Vale of Belvoir. The best
cheeses were made at Banbury, in Cheshire, or in the Chedder
district. But the latter, says Hartlib’s Legacie, were “seldom
seen but at Noblemans tables or rich Vintners Sellars.”” In some
places the new crops recommended by the Stewart writers had
been tried. Liquorice was grown with success at Pontefract in
Yorkshire and at ‘‘ Godliman ” in Surrey ; saffron was established
in Essex and Cambridgeshire; canary seed and caraways were
tried in Kent and Oxfordshire; hops were not confined to Kent,
but had spread into Suffolk, Essex, Surrey, and other counties ;
sainfoin had been tested at Cobham in Kent ; weld, used for dyeing
of “ bright Yellows and Limon-colours,”’ flourished near Canter-
bury ; madder and woad had been proved to be profitable crops ;
the best flax and hemp! were grown near Maidstone, where a
thread factory had been recently established, at Bow and Stratford
in Essex, and in Nottinghamshire. At a later date the district
round Beccles in Suffolk was famous for its hemp; rape and cole-
seed were established in Kent, Lincolnshire, and elsewhere. Kent,
Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, and the neighbour-
hood of London were famous for their apples, and as many as 200
varieties were collected in a single orchard. The cherries of Kent
and the quinces of Essex were in chief repute. ‘‘ There are now,”
writes William Hughes? “‘ in Kent and other places of this Nation,

1 England’s Improvement, and Seasonable Advice, etc. (London, 1691) is
an anonymous treatise on the growth of hemp and flax.

2 The Compleat Vineyard, by William Hughes, 1665. A second and enlarged
edition appeared in 1670, and The Flower Garden and Compleat Vineyard
in 1683.

HORSES AND CATTLE 137

such Vineyards and Wall-vines as produce great store of excellent
good wine.”

Increased attention was also being paid to live-stock, and the
values of distinctive breeds of horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs were
discussed. If Gervase Markham’s Cheape and good Husbandry
(edition of 1631) is compared with Mortimer’s Whole Art of
Husbandry (1707), some idea may be formed of the views of the
seventeenth century on stock-breeding.

On horses, Markham, in spite of the criticism of Child already
quoted, was reputed an authority. “ Now for the choyse of the
best Horse,” he writes, “‘ it is divers according to the use for which
you will imploy him.” Of “‘ Horses for the Warre,” he says, “ the
courser of Naples is accounted the best, the Almaine, the Sardinian,
or the French.” ‘“‘ For a Prince’s Seat, any supreame Magistrate,
or for any great Lady of state,’’ he recommends a “* milkewhite ”’ or
“faire dapple gray’ steed of English breed: failing that, a
“ Hungarian, Swethland, Poland, or Irish”’ horse. The best hunter
he finds in “‘ the English horse, bastardized with any of the former
Races first spoake of.’ The finest race-horses are “ the Arabian,
Barbary, or his bastard-Jennets, but the Twurkes are better.”
“ For travaile or burthen ” the best is the English horse, and “ the
best for ease is the Irish-hobby.” ‘‘ For portage, that is for the
Packe or Hampers,”’ and “for the Cart or Plough,” he makes no
selection. For coach horses, he chooses the large English gelding,
or the Flemish mare, or the Flemish or Frisian horse. There were
doubtless already distinctive breeds in England, such as the York-
shire saddle-horses of the Cleveland district, the heavy Black Horse
of the Midlands, the Suffolk Punch, or the West-country pack-
horse ; but they are not mentioned by Markham. Nor does Mor-
timer refer to any English breeds. He tells us, however, that
Leicestershire was in his day one of the great horse-breeding counties,
and that Hertfordshire farmers bought the colts as two-year-olds,
and sold them “at about six Years old to Gentlemen at London
for their Coaches.”

Among cattle, the best breeds ‘“‘ for meat ” were the long-horned
cattle of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, and Staffordshire. The
tall long-legged Lincolns, generally “‘ pide,’ with more white than
any other colour, were reckoned the best for ‘* labour and draught.”
“Those in Somersetshire and Gloucestershire are generally of a
blood-red colour, in all shapes like unto those in Lincolne-shire,

138 LATER STEWARTS AND THE REVOLUTION

and fittest for their uses.”” So far Markham. Mortimer adds
other breeds. “‘A good hardy Sort for fatting on barren or
middling Sort of Land are your Angleseys and Welch. The hardiest
are the Scotch.” The best breed for milking, in his opinion, was
“the longlegged short-horn’d Cow of the Dutch breed,’ chiefly
found in Lincolnshire and Kent.

Both Markham and Mortimer have much to say about sheep, which
were reckoned as the most profitable of live-stock. Their manifold
uses inspired Leonard Mascall1 to rhyme in “ praise of sheep ”’ :

“* These cattle (sheep) among the rest,
Is counted for man one of the best,
No harmful beast, nor hurt at all ;
His fleece of wool doth cloath us all,
Which keeps us all from extream cold ;
His flesh doth feed both young and old :
His tallow makes the candles white,
To burn and serve us day and night :
His skin doth pleasure divers ways,
To write, to wear, at all assaies ;
His guts, thereof we make wheel-strings ;
They use his bones for other things ;
His. horns some shepherds will not lose,
Because therewith they patch their shooes ;
His dung is chief, I understand,
To help and dung the Plowman’s land ;
Therefore the Sheep among the rest,
He is for man a worthy beast.”

But Mascall makes no attempt to distinguish varieties of breed.
Like many of the Stewart writers, he would probably have answered
as the Cumberland shepherd replied to the question—where he
got his rough-legged, ill-formed sheep—* Lor’, sir, they are sik as
God set upon the land; we never change any.” Markham, how-
ever, distinguishes the various breeds by the quality of their wool.
The finest short wool came from the small black-faced Hereford-
shire sheep in the neighbourhood of Leominster, and in parts of
Worcestershire and Shropshire. The Cotswold breed was heavier,
but the wool was longer and straighter in the staple, and the fleece
coarser. Parts of Warwickshire and Worcestershire, “ all Leicester-
shire, Buckinghamshire, and part of Northamptonshire, and that
part of Nottinghamshire which is exempt from Sherwood Forest”
produced “‘a large-boned Sheep, of the best shape and deepest

1 Mascall’s book on the Government of Cattell, originally published in 1591,
was still in circulation nearly a century later, under the title of The Countrey-

man’s Jewel. The edition of 1680 is said to be ‘‘ Gathered at first by Leonard
Mascal, but much Inlarged by Richard Ruscam, Gent.”

SHEEP AND PIGS 139

ax

staple.” These were pasture sheep, and their wool was coarse in
quality. The Yorkshire breed was “ of reasonable bigge bone, but
of a staple rough and hairie.”” Welsh sheep were to be “ praised
only in the dish, for they are the sweetest mutton.” The Lincoln-
shire salt marshes bore the largest animals; but “their legges and
bellies are long and naked, and their staple is coarser than any
other.” Mortimer practically repeats Markham’s list. But he adds
one significant remark. Speaking of Lincolns and the coarseness
of their wool, he says: “ they are lately much amended in their
Breed.’’ Some local pioneer of Bakewell and his Leicesters was
already attempting the improvement of Lincolns. Both Markham
and Mortimer condemn horned sheep, and advise buyers to choose
animals with plenty of bone. Both also repeat the warning of Fitz-
herbert and Tusser that on open-field farms lambs must be timed to
fall in January.

Pigs naturally take a prominent place in the books of ‘“ Rustick
Authors.” They are, says Markham, “troublesome, noysome,
unruly, and great ravenours,” yet they are “the Husbandmans
Best Scavenger, and the Huswifes most wholesome sinke,”’ and, “* in
the dish, so lovely and so wholesome, that all other faults may be
borne with.’ Mascall quotes as a proverb the common saying :
“The hog is never good but when he is in the dish.” The natural
cleanliness of the animal is strongly urged by all the seventeenth
century writers. As to breed, no English county could be said to
have a better sort than any other. But Markham thinks the best
pigs are raised in Leicestershire, some parts of Northamptonshire,
and the clay countries bordering on Leicestershire. As to colour, he
recommends white or “‘ sanded,”’ or black. But these last are said
to be rare. Pied pigs he considers to be more subject to measles.
Both he and Mortimer attribute the superiority of Leicestershire
and the surrounding districts to the great quantities of beans
and pulse which were raised in those counties, and Mortimer adds
that the pigs from those parts of the country were mostly sold in
London for use at sea.

At the Restoration, the greatest need of English farming was
the leadership of practical men, possessed of the leisure, the educa-
tion, and the capital, to test by experiments the value of a mass
of theoretical advice, to adopt new crops, introduce new methods,
improve the live-stock of the country. Such pioneers were found,
at a later date, among the large landowners. In 1660 they were

140 LATER STEWARTS AND THE REVOLUTION

not forthcoming from that or from any other class, and this want
of leadership to a great extent explains the reluctance of farmers
to put in practice many of the improvements which not only book-
farmers but practical agriculturists were recommending. The state
of society was still too unsettled, the title to land too insecure, to
tempt expenditure. The number of men who could afford the
necessary outlay was relatively few. Landed property in 1660 was
distributed in smaller quantities among more numerous owners
than it was a century later. The events of the Commonwealth
period had further increased this wide distribution of ownership.
Large quantities of land, confiscated by the Parliament, had been
thrown on the market. Many estates had also been forfeited to
the Government and sold, often in small parcels, because the
royalist owners either refused or neglected to compound for their
‘‘ delinquencies.” Portions of other properties had been sold by
their owners to pay the composition or the Decimation Tax. In
all these cases, numbers of the purchasers were small men. At the
Restoration, the estates of the Crown and of the Church, and the
confiscated lands of eminent royalists were restored to their original
owners, without compensation to purchasers who had bought under
the authority of the Commonwealth Government. But no attempt
was made to cancel the purchase of lands which had been sold
under forfeitures to the Parliament, or under the pressure of the
taxation imposed by the victorious Puritans on the vanquished
royalists. All claims of this nature were barred by an Act, which
disappointed Cavaliers condemned as an act of indemnity to the
King’s enemies and of oblivion to his friends. But whether the
Republicans were deprived of their purchases, or confirmed in their
possession, the example was not lost on their contemporaries. The
nature of the compromise effected at the Restoration necessarily
impaired the sense of security. When titles were precarious,
outlay of capital seemed too speculative a risk. Moreover, many
of the royalists who were fortunate enough to retain or regain
possession of their estates, found themselves too impoverished to
spend money on their improvement, or too formed in their habits
to endure the tediousness of directing them. The generations
which knew the Civil War, the Commonwealth, the Restoration,
the rebellion of Monmouth, and the Revolution had passed away,
before landowners, in widely different circumstances, assumed the
lead in agricultural progress.

INCREASED INFLUENCE OF LANDED GENTRY 141

Changes were already at work which, within the nest half century,
not only restored the position of the landed gentry, but gave them
an influence which they had never before possessed. Parliament
gained control over the Government, and the House of Commons
over Parliament. At the same time the jurisdiction of magistrates
was greatly extended. Controlling the House of Commons through
the county elections, administering local justice, allied with the
Church as the bulwark of Protestantism, recruiting from its
wealthiest members the order of the peerage, absorbing into its
own ranks their younger sons, the landed gentry became the pre-
dominant class in the country. How great was the increase in
their power may be illustrated by the difference in the attitude
which Elizabethan and Hanoverian Parliaments assumed towards
enclosures. Many of the seeds of this growth in the political and
social ascendancy of the landed aristocracy were sown during the
period under notice.

One of the first questions which came before the Restoration
Parliament was that of finance. Some permanent provision had
to be made for the ordinary charges of Government. A Committee
was appointed which reported that the average yearly income of
Charles I. for the period 1637-41 had been £900,000, but that of
this sum £200,000 were derived from sources no longer available.
Parliament decided to raise the annual income of the Crown to
£1,200,000. In providing this sum the lines laid down by the
Republican financiers were in the main followed. The cost of the
Civil War and the subsequent expenses of the Commonwealth
Government had been met by the old device of customs duties, and
by the new expedients of monthly assessments on lands and goods,
and of excise duties, borrowed from the Dutch financiers, on a
large range of products which at one time included meat and salt.
The old feudal dues, exacted by the Crown on all lands held by
military tenure, had dwindled in importance and value, in spite of
the attempts made by Henry VIII. and Charles I. to enforce them
with greater rigour. To a large extent their place had been taken
by parliamentary grants of subsidies on lands and goods. Those
which remained in operation were comparatively unproductive ;
they were besides uneconomical, uncertain, and inconvenient. They
were also not granted by Parliament, and thus provided the Crown
with funds which were not under national control. Their abolition
had been recommended in the reign of James I.; it had been

142 LATER STEWARTS AND THE REVOLUTION

carried by a resolution of both Houses of Parliament in 1645; it
was one of the terms of the Treaty of Newport in 1648, when Charles
J. agreed to surrender the dues for the payment of £100,000 a year ;
it had been demanded by Puritan agriculturists like Hartlib and
Blith ; finally, in 1656 the abolition had been passed into law with
the consent of Cromwell. Technically speaking, the legislation of
the Commonwealth was annulled by the Restoration ; practically,
however, the question was not whether the abolished dues should
be continued, but whether they should be revived. Against this
revival it was argued in 1660 that much land had changed hands
in the previous fifteen years without any provision for the possible
revival of the liability. The income voted for Charles II. had to
be provided, the problem of ways and means to be solved. The
Restoration Parliament might have abandoned the excise duty, or
revived the feudal dues, or substituted for them a land tax. They
retained the excise introduced by Republican financiers, but reduced
it by a half; they confirmed Cromwell’s abolition of the emolu-
ments which the Crown had derived from lands held in chivalry ; !
they declined by a majority of two votes to impose a land tax. At
the same time the Crown surrendered its oppressive prerogatives
of purveyance and pre-emption. No doubt the immediate result
of these fiscal changes was that the landed aristocracy continued
to be relieved from a burden, and that, from motives of self-interest,
they refused to revive, either in its original or in a substituted form,
a system of taxation which, before the Commonwealth, had once
attached to land held in chivalry.

The abolition of military tenures reduced to some extent the
necessary outgoings of many of the landed gentry. At the same
time the commercial policy adopted by the Restoration Government
maintained, if it did not swell, their incomes. The steady rise in
the price of wool during the past century had begun to hamper the
clothing trade. In order to lower prices for home manufacturers,
an Act passed in 1647, and re-enacted in 1660, prohibited its
exportation. Still further to stimulate the clothing industry, a
series of Acts,? from 1666 onwards, ordered the burial of the dead
in woollen fabrics. Partly for revenue, partly in compensation for
these concessions to manufacturing industries, partly to meet the
claims of impoverished adherents, partly to maintain the balance
between pasture and tillage, partly, no doubt, to make England

112 Car. II. c. 24. 218 and 19 Car. II. ec. 4.

REGULATION OF THE CORN TRADE 143

self-supporting in its food supplies, important ahignbes were made
in the laws which regulated the trade in corn. In the reign of
Philip and Mary, home-grown corn could not be exported if home-
prices for wheat rose above 6s. 8d. per quarter, and for cheaper
grains in proportion. This limit was raised by subsequent legisla-
tion. Thus the home price for wheat, at which exportation was
prohibited, was raised in 1593 to 20s., in 1604 to 26s. 8d., in 1623
to 32s., in 1660 to 40s.,2 in 1663 to 48s3 In 1660 duties were also
imposed on the importation of foreign wheat. These duties were
at first nominal. Thus they started at 2s. per quarter on imported
wheat, when home-prices exceeded 44s. In 1663 they were raised
to 5s. 4d. per quarter, when home-grown wheat rose above 48s.
In 16704 the corn laws became more frankly protective. No limit
of price was fixed above which the exportation of home-grown corn
was prohibited, and a heavy duty of 16s. a quarter was imposed
on foreign wheat when home prices did not exceed 53s. 4d. per
quarter. Similar duties were imposed on the importation of other
foreign grain at proportionate prices. A further change was made
in 1688.5 The Act of that year offered a bounty on the export
of home-grown corn of 5s. per quarter of wheat, whenever the
home-price fell below 48s. per quarter, and on other grain in pro-
portion. On these two principles, namely a duty on the importation
of foreign corn and a bounty on the exportation of home-grown
corn, combined with frequent prohibitions of exports, the corn
trade was regulated throughout the eighteenth century. Similar
measures were adopted to encourage the raising of cattle, and
importations from Ireland were prohibited. Legislation did not,
however, raise prices; it only succeeded in maintaining them.
Increased production at home counteracted the effect which the
restriction of imports might otherwise have produced. England,
says Sir William Petty,§ “doeth so abound in Victuals as
that it maketh Laws against the Importation of Cattle, Flesh
and Fish from abroad; and that the draining of Fens, im-
proving of Forests, inclosing’ of Commons, Sowing of St. Foyne
and Clover-grass be grumbled against by Landlords, as_ the
Way to depress the price of Victuals.”” Elsewhere he adds:

1See Appendix IIT. The Corn Laws. 212 Car. II. c. 4.
315 Car, Tl, eoy7 422 Car. IT. c. 13.
5] William and Mary, ec. 12.

6 Several Essays in Political Arithmetic, ed. 1755, pp. 150-169.

144. LATER STEWARTS AND THE REVOLUTION

“it is manifest that the land in its present Condition is able to
bear more Provision and Commodities, than it was forty years
ago.”

Throughout the period from the Restoration to the Revolution,
except for one disastrous year of plague, fire, and war, the country
prospered. The receipts from customs steadily advanced. Trade
was expanding. As Amsterdam decayed, and Portuguese and
Spanish Jews fled to England to escape the Inquisition, money
flowed into the country. Other religious refugees brought with
them useful arts and manufactures. The development of banking
stimulated commercial undertakings. Between 1661 and 1687 the
receipts from the customs duties more than doubled. Fortunes,
made in the city were often invested in land, which now was begin-
ning to confer on its possessors a new political and social influence.
The landed gentry shared in the growing prosperity, either through
its general effects on the country, or by wealthy marriages, or by
sending their sons—as Rashleigh Osbaldistone was sent by Sir
Hildebrand—into business. Between 1675 and 1700, said Sir
William Temple “ the first noble families married into the City.” ?
Latimer had preached against landlords becoming “ graziers,”’ and
aldermen turning “ colliers,’’ and disquietude at this commercial
tendency had influenced the legislation of Edward VI. But times
had changed. Though Heralds still distinguished between “‘ foreign
Merchants ” and retail shopkeepers, on the ground apparently that
“* Navigation was the only laudable part of all buying and selling,”
yet they? had solemnly decided that ‘“‘ if a Gentleman be bound
an Apprentice to a Merchant, or other Trade, he hath not thereby
lost his Degree of Gentility.”

Closely united with the nobility, the Church, and the merchant
princes, sharing in the general prosperity, and, in virtue of their
property, exercising new political and social powers, the landed
gentry were beginning to acquire that predominant influence which
was so marked a feature in the eighteenth century. The change
necessarily added an artificial value to the ownership of land: it
not only arrested the tendency towards its wider distribution, but
encouraged its accumulation in fewer hands. Once acquired,
estates were held together by the introduction of family settle-

1 Quoted by Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, ed. 1887, p. 63.

* Logan’s Treatise of Honor at the end of Gwillim’s Display of Heraldry
(ed. 1679) Spy lab!

AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS IN 1696 145
\
ments. On the eve of this change, it may be of interest to
note a contemporary estimate of the agricultural population
and wealth of the country at the close of the eighteenth cen-
tury.

Gregory King, whose training and experience specially qualified
him for the task, drew up a statistical account of the “‘ State and
Condition ” of England and Wales in 1696. His estimates of the
actual numbers of the population are the result of an investigation
by a competent and careful observer, who made the fullest use of
the information supplied by such figures as those contained in the
Hearth-office, the assessments on Births, Marriages, and Burials,
the Parish Registers, and Public Accounts. The substantial
accuracy of this part of his work has stood the test of subsequent
criticism, in spite of his prophecy that in 1900 the population
would have risen to 7,350,000. For the rest of his estimates he
mainly depended on guess-work. Confidence is scarcely created by
his laborious calculation of the numbers of hares, rabbits, and
wild fowl in the country. King’s figures were largely used by
Davenant,! but his actual manuscript remained unpublished till
1801.

King estimated the total acreage of England and Wales at 39
million * acres; of which 11 million acres were arable, averaging
a yearly rent per acre of 5s. 10d.; and 10 million were meadow or
pasture, averaging 9s. an acre. Of the 11 million arable acres, ten
million were under the plough for corn, pease, beans, and vetches ;
one million acres were allotted to flax, hemp, saffron, woad and
other dyeing weeds, etc. He goes on to calculate the live-stock of
the country thus : “ horses (and asses),”’ 600,000 ; cattle, 44 million ;
sheep, 11 million; pigs, 2 million. The total population in 1696
is estimated at 5,500,000 persons, distributed into 1,400,000 urban,
and 4,100,000 rural, inhabitants. The total yearly income of the
nation in 1688 is calculated at £43,500,000. Of this total, con-

1An EHssay upon the Probable Methods of making a People Gainers in
the Ballance of Trade, by Charles Davenant, 1698 (Section I. “‘Of the
People of England,” and Section II. ‘‘ Of-the Land of England and its
Product ’’).

2 Published in An Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain, by
George Chalmers (1802), under the title of ‘‘ Natural and Political Observa-
tions and Conclusions upon the State and Condition of England, 1696; by
Gregory King, Esq., Lancaster Herald.”

3 The actual figure is 37,319,221 acres.
K

146 LATER STEWARTS AND THE REVOLUTION

siderably more than half (£24,480,000) belonged to the following
families :

Average
Yearly Income.
40,000 Freeholders ! of the better sort = ed Oe
140,000 Freeholders of the lesser sort. - . 50 0 0
150,000 Farmers - . - - . 44 0 0
364,000 Labouring People and Out- servants - 15,0, 0
400,000 Cottagers and Paupers~ - - - 610 0?

King’s estimates bring into strong relief the vast revolution
which the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries produced in the dis-
tribution of population and of wealth. The same point is illustrated
from a different point of view by a comparison of the wealth of the
different counties in 1696 and at the present day. Material for
such a comparison is found in the frequent assessments which were
made of the counties during the seventeenth century for various
fiscal purposes. The central counties are the richest ; then follow
in order of wealth the south, the east, the west. Poorest of all is
the north. Throughout the whole period, Middlesex is the richest
and Cumberland the poorest county. The most conspicuous change
was that of Surrey, which rose from the eighteenth place in 1636 to
the second in 1693. Excluding Middlesex, and excepting Surrey,
the wealthiest district throughout the whole period was formed by
a block of six agricultural counties north of the Thames—namely
Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Oxford-
shire, and Northamptonshire. Their position illustrates the im-
portance of London as a market for agricultural produce. Already
its rapid growth was exciting alarm, lest “‘ the Head ” should become
“too big for the Body.” According to Gregory King, its popula-
tion was 530,000 souls out of an urban population of 1,400,000, and
a total population, urban and rural, of 54 millions. Throughout
the whole period, again, the seven poorest counties, though their
order in the list varies, were Cheshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire,
Lancashire, Northumberland, Durham, and Cumberland. The
assessment of the whole district north of the Humber, comprising
one-fifth of the total area of England, was not greater than that of

1 It should be noted that freeholders included not only owners and occupy-
ing owners, but tenants for life and lives, as well as copyholders.

* For tables of estimates drawn up by King and Davenant, see Appendix
EY.

POVERTY OF THE NORTH OF ENGLAND 147
\

Wiltshire. In the latter half of the following century not only
wealth but population migrated northwards, and the inhabitants
of rural districts began to flow into the centres of trade and manu-
facture which crowded round the coal and iron fields and water-
power of the northern counties.

CHAPTER VII.

JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND. 1700-1760.

Agricultural progress in the eighteenth century ;) enclosures necessary to
advance; advocates and opponents of the enclosing movement; area
of uncultivated land and of land cultivated in open-fields ; defects of the
open-field system as a method of farming ; pasture commons as adjuncts
to open-field holdings ; the necessary lead in agricultural progress given
by large landowners and large farmers; procedure in enclosures by Act
of Parliament: varying dates at which districts have been enclosed :
influence of soil and climate in breaking up or maintaining the open-field
system : the East Midland and North Eastern group of counties : improved
methods and increased resources of farming; Jethro Tull the “ greatest
individual improver ”’ ; Lord Townshend’s influence on Norfolk husbandry.

THE gigantic advance of agriculture in the nineteenth century
dwarfs into insignificance any previous rate of progress. Yet the
change between 1700 and 1800 was astonishing. England not only
produced food for a population that had doubled itself, as well as
grain for treble the number of horses, but during the first part of
the period became, as M. de Lavergne has said, the granary of
Europe. Population before 1760 grew so slowly that the soil,
without any great increase in farming skill or in cultivated area,
produced a surplus. Under the spur of the bounty, land which had
been converted to pasture was again ploughed for corn, and proved
by its yield that it had profited by the prolonged rest. The price
of wheat, between the years 1713 and 1764, in spite of large exports,
averaged 34s. 11d. per quarter; poor-rates fell below the level of
the preceding century ; real wages were higher than they had been
since the reign of Henry VI. In England, at least, there was little
civil war or tumult, no glut of the labour market, no sudden growth
of an artisan class. The standard of living improved. Instead of
the salted carcases of half-starved and aged oxen, fresh meat began
to be eaten by the peasantry. Wheaten bread ceased to be a luxury
of the wealthy, and, at the accession of George III. had become the

THE PEASANTS’ GOLDEN AGE 149
oN

bread-stuff of half the population. Politically and morally, the
period was corrupt and coarse ; materially, it was one of the Golden
Ages of the peasant. The only drawbacks to the general prosperity
of agriculture during the first half of the century were the visita-
tions of the rot, and of the cattle plague. Ellis! speaks of the rot
in 1735 as “‘ the most general one that has happened in the memory
of man . . . the dead bodies of rotten sheep were so numerous in
roads, lanes, and fields, that their carrion stench and smell proved
extremely offensive to the neighbouring parts and the passant
travellers.” A newer and more mysterious scourge was the cattle
plague. Starting in Bohemia, it travelled westward, devastated
the north of France, and three times visited England. The only
remedy was to slaughter infected animals; in a single year the
Government, paying one-third of the value, expended £135,000 in
compensation.

The great changes which English agriculture witnessed as the
eighteenth century advanced, and particularly after the accession
of George III. (1760), are, broadly speaking, identified with Jethro
Tull, Lord Townshend, Bakewell of Dishley, Arthur Young, and
Coke of Norfolk. With their names are associated the chief
characteristics in the farming progress of the period, which may be
summed up in the adoption of of "improved methods of cultivation,
the introduction of new crops, the reduction of stock- breeding to
a science, the } provision on Of increased facilities of communication and

of transport, and the enterprise and outlay of capitalist landlords
and “tenant-farmers. The improvements which these pioneers |
initiated, taught, or exemplified, enabled England to meet_the |
strain of the Napoleonic wars, to bear the burden of additional
taxation, and to feed the vast centres of commercial industr ry which |
sprang up, as if f by magic, | at _a time when food snpphes could not

tion of ‘separate. occupation for the entiont system of common cul-
tivation, this agricultural progress was impossible. But in carrying
out the necessary changes, rural society was convulsed, and its
general conditions revolutionised. The divorce of the peasantry
from the soil, and the extinction of commoners, open-field farmers,
and eventually of small freeholders, were the heavy price which the
nation ultimately paid for the supply of bread and meat ta_its
manutacturing population.

1 Shepherd’s Sure Guide, 1749.

150 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND

Neither the reclamation of wastes, nor the break-up of open-
field farms, nor the appropriation of commons, were novelties. For
the last three centuries the three processes, which are generally
spoken of as enclosures, had all been proceeding at varying rates of
progress. But in the period from 1760 to_1815 each received an
immense impetus, partly from the rise in the price of corn, partly
from the consequent increase in rental values, partly from the
pressure of a growing population, partly from the improved standard
of agriculture. ~ The literary struggle in advocacy or condemnation
of enclosures still continued. But the advocates were gaining the
upper hand. In the first half of the eighteenth century, there are
at least two notable contributions to the literature of the subject
by champions of enclosures, and only one of any importance by an
opponent.

By the new writers, the unprofitable nature of the use of land
under common tillage or common pasture is insisted upon. Thus
Timothy Nourse, Gent., in his Campania Foelix ; or Discourse of
the Benefits and Improvements of Husbandry (1700), Migoneaey attacks
commons as “‘ Seminaries of a lazy Thieving sort of People.” In his
opinion their live-stock were as unprofitable to the community as
the commoners themselves. Their sheep are described as “ poor,
tatter’d, and poyson’d with the Rot,” their cattle ‘‘ as starv’d, Tod-
bellied Runts, neither fit for the Dairy nor the Yoke.” So, also,
an anonymous author in a short and pithy tract, An Old Almanack
(with some considerations for improving commons) printed in 1710.
With a Postscript (1734-5), suggests that, if the landowner and two-
thirds, in number and value, of those interested in an open-field
farm and common agreed to an enclosure, their consent should
override the opposition of the minority. ‘‘ Will the Commoners
complain,’’ he asks, “‘ for want of their Commonage ? This they can’t
do, for few of them have any Cattle, and whether they have or not,
there is Recompence out of the Inclosures will more than treble
their Loss ? Will the Incumbents complain ? What! for converting
the dry Commons into Corn, and the Fenns into Hemp and Flax.
Will the Ingrossers of Commons complain, who eat up their own Share
and others too? This they dare not. But won’t those honest Men
complain who now live upon the Thefts of Common? And not with the
least Reason, but then there will be Work for them.” But the two
important advocates of enclosures were the brothers John and
Edward Laurence. In A New System of Agriculture (1726) a note

JOHN AND EDWARD LAURENCE 151

is struck which sounded more loudly as towns lose as, with their
growth, the demand increased for meat, milk, and butter, as agri-
culture improved, as communication was facilitated. The author,
the Rev. John Laurence, Rector of Bishops Wearmouth, treats
open-field farms as obstacles to agricultural progress. He insists
on enclosures and separate occupation as the best means of increas-
ing produce and of raising rents. He dwells on the rapid progress .
which enclosures were then making, points out the great rise in
rental value consequent on increased produce, and argues that so
far from injuring the poor, enclosures will rather create a new demand
for labour by the introduction of improved tillage and pasture- |
farming, will give employment in fencing and ditching, and remove
the attractions of wastes | and open ‘spaces, | which * draw to them
the poor and necessitous only for the advantage of pilfering and
stealing.” In The Duty of a Steward to his Lord (1727) Edward
Laurence, himself a land-surveyor, and apparently agent ‘to the
Duke of Buckingham, argues the case from the point of view of
better and more economical management. A new skilled pro-
fession was growing up. It is prophetic of future changes that
Laurence points out the evils of employing ‘“ country-Attorneys
(not skilled in Husbandry) ” in the management of landed property,
and argues that the gentry should allow handsome salaries to their
stewards, who could, if inadequately paid, adopt other means of
enriching themselves. A champion of “ engrossing,” he insists on
the advantages of ee holdings in larger farms. ‘He

urges stewards to prevent piecemeal enclosures by individuals, to

substitute leaseholds for copyholds, to buy up any freeholds on the |
estate which lie in intermixed strips, as necessary preliminaries to
any successful and ‘general ‘scheme for the enclosure of open-fields
and commons. The other side to the picture is vigorously painted
by John Cowper in his Essay proving that Inclosing Commons and
Common-Field-Lands is Contrary to the Interest of the Nation (1732).
He answers the arguments of the two Laurences, arguing that
enclosures nece necessarily i injure the small freeholder and the poor, and
pleading that, so far from encouraging labour, they depopulate_ the
villages in which they have been carried out. Speaking of the
small freeholder, he says that ‘“‘ none are more industrious, none
toil and labour so hard. ... I myself have seen within these 30
years, above 20 Lordships or parishes enclosed, and everyone
of them has thereby been in a manner depopulated. If

152 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND

any one can shew me where an Inclosure has been made, and
not at least half the inhabitants gone, I will throw up the
argument.”

In the passages quoted from these five books are outlined some
of the principal points in the dispute which was fought out in the
next eighty years. On the one side are pleaded the pernicious
effects of commons on the inhabitants of the neighbourhgod and
their live-stock ; the absence of any legal title to many of the
rights claimed over pasture commons, and their frequent abuse by
commoners ; the obstacles to farming improvement which were pre-
sented by open arable fields ; the unprofitable use of land occupied
in common ; the Goneneien and productive a advantages of enlarged,
separate holdings. On the other side is urged the injury which the
break-up ot open-field farms and the partition of commons inflicted
on small owners and occupiers of land. Much was to be said from
both points of view. Many sweeping assertions were made, both
by advocates and opponents, which were true of one district but
untrue of another. Both socially and economically, the reclama-
of commons, vader be justified by the. isigueat eens developing
the productiveness of the soil, and of increasing to the fullest extent
the food resources of the country. In favour of the first two
changes, most agricultural writers are agreed ; in dealing with the
commons, it is at least doubtful whether the best possible course
was always adopted.

From _ the productive point of view, the amount of waste land
was a standing reproach to agriculture. The disappearance of the
wild boar and the wolf in the reign of Charles II. suggests some
diminution of the area in which those animals had harboured. But
in 1696 Gregory King had estimated the heaths, moors, mountains,
and barren lands of England and Wales at ten million acres, or
more than a quarter of the total area. In all probability, the
estimate is wholly inadequate. But, assuming the calculation to
be approximately correct, it affords some measure of comparison
with conditions at the close of the eighteenth century. In 1795
the Board of Agriculture ! stated that over 22 million acres in Great
Britain were uncultivated, of which 7,888,977 acres were in England
and Wales. Here too there is probably a gross under-estimate.

1 Report of the Committee of the Board of Agriculture (1795). The total
acreages are over-estimated.

WASTE LANDS IN ENGLAND 153.
\

Arthur Young,! twenty years before (1773), had called attention to
the extent of land lying waste in Great Britain. ‘‘ There are,” he
says, “ at least 600,000 acres waste in the single county of Northum-
berland. In those of Cumberland and Westmoreland, there are
as many more. In the north and part of the West Riding of York-
shire, and the contiguous ones of Lancashire, and in the west part
of Durham, are yet greater tracts ; you may draw a line from the
north point of Derbyshire to the extremity of Northumberland, of
150 miles as the crow flies, which shall be entirely across waste
lands: the exception of small cultivated spots very trifling.” It
was across this district that Jeanie Deans travelled in the days of
George II., when great districts of Northumberland were covered
with forests of broom, thick and tall enough to hide a Scottish army.
Lancashire in 1794 still had 108,500 acres of waste, and Rossendale
remained achace. As late as 1794, three-quarters of Westmoreland,
according to Bishop Watson, lay uncultivated. In 1734 the forest
of Knaresborough had surrounded Harrogate so thickly that “‘ he
was thought a cunning fellow that could readily find out those
Spaws.” Even in the last decade of the eighteenth century,
265,000 acres of Yorkshire were lying waste, yet largely capable
of cultivation. Up to the accession of George III., that part of the
East Riding which was called the Carrs, from Bridlington Quay to
Spurn Point, and inland as far as Driffield, was an extensive swamp
producing little but the ague; willow trees marked out the road
from Hull to Beverley, and the bells rang at dusk from the tower
of Barton-upon-Humber to guide. belated travellers. Great tracts
of Derbyshire were “black regions of ling.’”’ From Sleaford to
Brigg, “all that the devil o’erlooks from Lincoln Town,” was a
desolate waste, over which wayfarers were directed by the land
lighthouse of Dunstan pillar. No fences were to be seen for miles—
only the furze-capped sand-banks which enclosed the warrens.
The high ground from Spilsby to Caistor was similarly a bleak
unproductive heath. Robin Hood and Little John might still
have sheltered in Sherwood Forest, which occupied a great part of
Nottinghamshire. The fen districts of the counties of Cambridge,
Huntingdon, Lincoln, and Northampton continued to defy the
assaults of drainage. Even in the neighbourhood of London similar

1 Observations on the Present State of Waste Lands of Great Britain, 1773.
Young’s calculations are also based on an exaggerated estimate of the acreage:
of England and Wales.

154 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND

conditions prevailed. Nathaniel Kent, writing in 1775 (Hints to
Gentlemen of Landed Property), says “ that within thirty miles of
the capital, there is not less than 200,000 acres of waste land.” As
late as 1793, Hounslow Heath and Finchley Common were described
as wastes, fitted only for “‘ Cherokees and savages.” In 1791, the
Weald of Surrey still bore evidence of its desolation in the posts
which stood across it as “‘ guides to letter-carriers.”’ In Essex,
Epping and Hainault Forests were in 1794 “‘ known to be a resort
of the most idle and profligate of men ; here the undergraduates in
iniquity commence their career with deer stealing, and here the
more finished and hardened robber retires from justice.’ Counties
more remote from London had a still larger area of wastes. When
Young made his Farmer’s Tours in the first decade of the reign
of George III., Sedgmoor was still one vast fen, the Mendip Hills
were uncultivated, and eighteen thousand acres on the Quantock
Hills lay desolate. Over Devonshire, Cornwall, and the whole of
Wales, stretched, in 1773, “‘ immense ”’ tracts of wastes. To bring
some of these wastes into cultivation was part of the work which
agriculturists undertook in the eighteenth century, and if the
estimates of Gregory King (1696) and of the Board of Agriculture
(1793) are approximately correct, upwards of two million acres
were added to the cultivated area before the close of the period.

It is possible that in_1700 at least half the arable land of the
country was still cultivated on the: open-field | system—that is, in
village farms by associations of agricultural partners who occupied
intermixed strips, and cultivated the whole area under common
rules of cropping. Out of 8,500 parishes, which in round numbers
existed at the Reformation, 4,500 seem to have been still laid out,
in whole or in part, on this ancient method. John Laurence in
1726 had calculated that a third of the cultivated area “is what
we call Common Fields.” The agricultural defects of the open-
field system were obvious and numerous. So long as farming had
been unprogressive, and population had remained stationary, the
economic loss was comparatively unimportant. When improved
methods and increased resources were commanded by farmers, and

need for change became imperative. - “Under the primitive pein

the area under the plough was e: excessive, and much land, which

might have been more profitably employed as pasture, was tilled
for corn. A quantity of the arable land was wasted in innumerable

SOME DEFECTS OF OPEN-FIELD catia 155

balks and footpaths. A-l the occupiers were ae by rigid cus-

tomary rules, compelled to treat all kinds of soil alike, obliged to
keep exact time with one another in sowing and reaping their crops.
Freeholders on open-field farms were only half-owners. No winter
crops could be grown so long as the arable fields were subjected to
common rights of pasture from August to February. It meant
financial ruin, if any member of the community grew turnips, clover,
or artificial grasses for the benefit of his neighbours. The strips of
land occupied by each partner were too narrow to admit of cross-
ploughing or cross-harrowing, and on heavy land this was a serious
drawback. Drainage was practically impossible, for, if one man
drained or water-furrowed his land, or scoured his courses, his
neighbour might block his outfalls. It was to carry off the water
that the arable land was heaped up into high ridges between two
furrows. But the remedy was almost as bad as the disease. The
richness of the soil was washed off the summit of the ridge into
the trenches, which often, as Kent! records, contained water three
yards wide, dammed back at either end by the high-ridged head-
lands. The cultivated fields were generally foul, if not from the
fault of the occupier, from the slovenliness of his neighbours ; the
turf-balks harboured twitch ; the triennial fallows left their heritage
of crops of docks and thistles. The unsheltered, hedgeless_open-

fields were often hurtful to live-stock, though the absence of hedges
was not without its advantages to the corn. The farm-buildings
were gathered together in the village, often a mile or more from
the land. As each man’s strips lay scattered over each of the open-
fields, he wasted_his day in visiting the different parcels of his
holding, and his expenses of manuring, reaping, carting, and horse-
keeping were enormously increased by the remoteness of the different
parts of his occupation. Vexatious rights interfered with proper
cultivation. One man might have the right to turn his plough on
another’s strip, and the victim must either wait his neighbour’s
pleasure or risk the damage to his sown crops. “ Travellers,’ as
Joseph Lee? remarked in 1656, ‘“‘ know no highwaies in the common
fields” ; each avoided his predecessor’s ruts, and cattle trespassed
as they passed. For twenty yards on either side of the track the
growing corn was often spoiled. The sheep were driven to the

commons by day, and in the summer folded at night on the fallows.

1 Hints to Gentlemen of Landed Property, by Nathaniel Kent, 1775.
2 Vindication of a Regulated Enclosure, p. 24.

156 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND

Otherwise the manure of the live-stock was wasted over the wide
area, which the animals traversed to find their scanty food. Unable
to provide winter keep, and fettered by the common rights of
pasture which each of the partners enjoyed over the whole of the
arable land, farmers reared lambs and calves under every dis-
advantage. During the summer months, when the horses and
cattle were tethered on the unsheltered balks, they lost flesh and
pined in the heat. Ill-fed all the year round, and half-starved in
the winter, the live-stock dwindled in size. The promiscuous
herding of sheep and cattle generated every sort of disorder. The
common pasture was pimpled with mole-heaps and ant-hills, and,
from want of drainage, pitted with wet patches where nothing
grew but rushes. The scab was rarely absent from the crowded
common-fold, or the rot from the ill-drained plough-land and
pasture. No individual owner could attempt to improve his flock
or his herd, when all the cattle and sheep of the village grazed
together on the same commons.

The open-field_system—was_proverbially the source of quarrels.
Litigation was incessant. It was easy for men to plough up a
portion of the common balks or headlands, to shift their neighbour’s
landmarks, or poach their land, by a turn of the plough, or filch
their crops when reaping. Robert Mannyng in his Handlyng Synne
(1303) had condemned the “fals husbandys”’ that “ere aweye
falsly mennys landys,” and William Langland in Piers Plowman
(1369) had denounced the ploughman who “ pynched on” the
adjoining half-acre, and the reapers who reaped their neighbour’s
ground. Tusser repeats the complaint of the mediaeval moralists
against the ‘champion’ or open-field farmer :—

““'The Champion robbeth by night,
And prowleth and filcheth by day :
Himself and his beasts out of sight,
Both spoileth and maketh away
Not only thy grass but thy corn,
Both after and e’er it be shorn.”
Gascoigne in The Steel Glasse (1576) condemns the open-field farmer
who

ce

. set debate between their lords

By earing up the balks that part their bounds.”
Joseph Lee repeats the charge. “It is,’’ he says, “‘ a practice too
common in the common fields, where men make nothing to pull up
their neighbour’s landmark, to plow up their land and mow their

THE PASTURE COMMONS 157

grasse that lyeth next to them.” For open-field oan the curse
in the Commination Service had a real meaning. Edward Lau-
rence ! (1727) dwells on the temptations to dishonesty which the
unfenced lands and precarious boundaries of open-fields offered
to the needy, and the same point is repeatedly insisted upon by the
Reporters to the Board of Agriculture at the end of the eighteenth
century. Hence it was that open-field farmers agreed among
themselves as little as ‘‘ wasp doth with bee.’’ Hence also came
the numerous law-suits. “‘ How many brawling contentions,” says
Lee, ‘“‘are brought before the Judges every Assizes by the in-
habitants of the common fields.”

Speaking generally, enclosure meant the simultaneous processes
of consolidating the intermixed _strips_of open-field farms and of
dividing - the commons attached to them as adjuncts of the arable ©
holdings. But this was not universally the case. Sometimes the
arable farm had been enclosed, and only the pasture common
remained to be divided. Sometimes the reverse was the case ;
the common had gone, and only the arable land remained to be
enclosed. Sometimes land, previously enclosed by agreement or
piecemeal by individuals, was re-enclosed under a general scheme,
probably for purposes of redistribution. Sometimes the acreage
mentioned in Inclosure Acts, as tested by the awards, is exaggerated,
more rarely under-estimated. All these differences make accurate
calculations of the actual area affected by the appropriation of
pasture-commons and the extinction of open-field farms extremely
difficult, if not impossible. Now that the commons as adjuncts
of arable farming have greatly contracted in area, their comparative
disappearance is deplored on both economic and social grounds,
in accordance with ideas which are of recent growth. It might
have been possible to regulate their use to greater profit, or to pre-
serve them as open spaces for recreation and as the lungs of large
towns, or to divide them on methods which recognised more fully
the minor rights claimed by small commoners, and would thus
have benefited a larger section of the community. But so long as
the herbage of the commons, both in legal theory and _ historical
origin, formed an essential part of the arable farm, and was subject
to rights claimed against all the world by the privileged occupiers
of the tillage land, there were practical difficulties in the way of
each of these possible courses. Agriculturists scarcely looked

1 Duty of a Steward to his Lord.

158 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND

beyond the undrained and impoverished condition of the pastures ;
lawyers held that rights of common, claimed apart from the tenure
of arable land or ancient cottages, were in the nature of encroach-
ments or trespass; economists condemned their occupation in
common as a wasteful and unprofitable use of the land; social
reformers pointed to the attractions which commons possessed for
idlers, and deplored their influence on morals and industry. All
these classes may have been, consciously or unconsciously, self-
interested. There were few, certainly, who realised the full con-
sequences of enclosures, or appreciated the strength of the impulse
which the enclosing movement would give to capitalist farming,
and the immediate success of the agricultural change removed the
hesitation even of the most far-seeing.

Custom in the course of centuries had dealt hardly with the
commons. Many of them were unstinted, and were consequently
overcharged with stock, which often belonged to jobbers and not
to the commoners. Even in good seasons, there was barely enough
grass to keep the cattle and sheep alive. In bad seasons, when
the weather was cold or wet, and the grass late and scanty, many
died from want of food. In other cases, while the main body of
commoners were restricted in the number of their stock, one or
more commoners, not always lords of adjacent manors, were
restrained by no limit, and not only turned out as many of their
own sheep and cattle as they could, but also took in those of
strangers. The poorer the commoner, the less_was the benefit he
derived. If the commons were stinted, every commoner, who
occupied other pasture land in severalty, saved his own grass till
the last moment by keeping his sheep and cattle on the common,
and the small man, who had no other refuge for his live-stock, was
the sufferer. Where the commons, again, were stinted, the richer
men frequently turned out more than the custom allowed, and the
smaller commoners had lost the protection of the old Courts Baron,
where the offenders, before the decay of those tribunals, would have
been ‘“ presented.” Monied men turned stock-jobbers or dealers,
hired land at double rents on the edge of the commons, and so
obtained grazing rights which they exercised by overstocking the
land with their own sheep and cattle or by agisting the live-stock
of strangers. It was thus that, in 1793, ‘‘ an immense number of
greyhound-like sheep, pitiful half-starved-looking animals, subject
to rot,’’ crowded Hounslow Heath, and that in 1804 the common

COMMONS AND COTTAGERS 159

of Cheshunt was grazed not by the poor but by a parcel of jobbers.
The poverty of the pasture was often proved by the condition of
the stock. ‘‘ It is painful to observe the very wretched appearance
of the animals,” writes an anonymous author in The Farmer's
Magazine for May, 1802, *“* who have no other dependence but upon
the pasture of these commons, and who, in most instances bear a
greater resemblance to living skeletons than anything else.” ‘“‘ The
stock,’’ he continues, “‘ turned out yearly into these commons con-
sists of a motley mixture of all the different breeds of sheep and
cattle at present known in the island ; many of which are diseased,
deformed, small, and in every respect unworthy of being bred from.”
In theory, the commons enabled the cottagers, who occupied at
higher rents the ancient cottages which legally conferred the rights,
to supplement their wages by keeping a cow or two. But the
theory did not always agree with the practice. Often, if the
cottager had money enough to buy a cow, the cow could barely
find a living on land already overrun with sheep. The cottager’s
profits from the commons mainly consisted in the use or sale of
turf, gorse, and brushwood which he cut for fuel, the run for a few
geese and a “ragged shabby horse” or pony. In theory, again,
the value of the commons to a small farmer, whose holding, whether
freehold, copyhold, or leasehold, was mainly arable, was inestimable
—provided that he was near enough to make good use of the grass-
land. But, in fact, the value was often minimised by distance, by
the wretched condition of the undrained and over-stocked pasture,
and by the risk of infection to the live-stock. There can be no
question that, from an agricultural point of view, five acres of
pasture, added in individual occupation to the arable holding of
a small occupier, and placed near the rest of his land, would have
been a greater boon than pasture rights over 250 acres of common.

Some of the practical evils of open-fields and their attendant
pasture-commons might have been, with time, skill, and patience,
mitigated. In some districts the village farms were better managed
than in others. But even if the pressure of increasing population
and the difficulties of a great war had not necessitated immediate
action, the inherent defects of the system could not be cured. The
general description which has been given of open-field farming
applies to every part of the country. Scotland formed no excep-
tion to the rule. Scottish farmers, who are now reckoned among
the most skilful, were, in 1700, inferior in their management of land

“ee

160 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND

to those of England, and their methods of raising crops had remained
unchanged since the Battle of Bannockburn. Advocates of en-
closure in England might legitimately argue that the rapid progress
of Scottish farming dates from the General Enclosure Act for
Scotland which was passed in 1695. The south-eastern counties
were the first to be improved. Forty years before (1661), John
Ray + had painted an unfavourable picture of the condition of the
inhabitants. “The men seem to be very lazy, and may be
frequently observed to plow in their cloaks. . . . They have
neither good bread, cheese, or drink. They cannot make them, nor
will they learn. Their butter is very indifferent, and one would
wonder how they could contrive to make it so bad. They use
much pottage made of coal-wort, which they call keal, sometimes
broth of decorticated barley. The ordinary country houses are
pitiful cots, built of stone, and covered with turves, having in them
but one room, many of them no chimneys, the windows very small
holes, and not glazed.’’ Alexander Garden of Troup describes the
farming system which was followed in 1686. The land was divided
into in-field and out-field. The in-field was kept “ constantly
under corne and bear, the husbandmen dunging it every thrie years,
and, for his pains, if he reap the fourth corne, he is satisfied.” The
out-field was allowed to grow green with weeds and thistles, and,
after four or five years of this repose, was twice ploughed and sown
with corn. Three crops were taken in succession; then, when the
soil was too exhausted to repay seed and labour, it reverted to its
weeds and thistles. Sir Archibald Grant,? of Monymusk in Aber-
deenshire, says that in 1716 turnips grown in fields by the Earl of
Rothes and a few others were objects of wonder to the neighbour-
hood, that, except in East Lothian, no wheat was grown, that on
his own estate there were no enclosures, no metalled roads, and no
wheel-carriages. On the family property, when his father allowed
him to undertake the management—“‘ there was not one acre
inclosed, nor any timber upon it, but a few elm, cycamore, and ash
about a small kitchen garden adjoining to the house, and some
stragling trees at some of the farm-yards, with a small cops-
wood, not inclosed, and dwarfish, and broused by sheep and
cattle. All the farmes ill disposed, and mixed ; different persons
having alternate ridges ; not one wheel-carriage on the esteat, nor
1 Select Remains of John Ray, London, 1760.
® Miscellany of the Spalding Club, Aberdeen, 1841-2, vol. ii. p. 96 etc.

LAND AS AN INVESTMENT FOR MONEY 161

~

indeed any one road that would alow it. ... The whole land
raised and uneven, and full of stones, many of them very large,
of a hard iron quality, and all the ridges crooked in shape of an S,
and very high and full of noxious weeds, and poor, being worn out
by culture, without proper manure or tillage. . . . The people
poor, ignorant, and slothfull, and ingrained enimies to planting,
enclosing, or any improvements or cleanness.”

Neither in Scotland nor in England were open-field farmers, or
tenants-at-will, or even leaseholders for lives, likely to initiate
changes in the cultivation of the soil. It was almost equally idle
to expect that small freeholders would attempt experiments on the
agricultural methods of their forefathers, which, in a single season,
might bring them to the verge of ruin. In both countries, it was
the large landlords who took the lead in the agricultural revolution
ot the eighteenth century, and the larger farmers who were the first
to adopt improvements. Both classes found that land was the
most profitable investment for their capital Their personal
motives were probably, in the main, self-interested, and a rise in
rental value or in the profits of their business was their reward.
But though philanthropy and farming make a fractious mixture,
the movement was of national value. When the sudden develop-
ment of manufacturing industries created new markets for food-
supplies, necessity demanded the conversion of the primitive self-
sufficing village-farms into factories of bread and meat. For more
than half a century the natural conservatism or caution of agri-
culturists resisted any extensive change. Down to 1760 the
pressure of a growing population was scarcely felt. Nor were the
commercial advantages of scientific husbandry so clearly established,
even in 1790, as to convince the bulk of English landlords of the
wisdom of adopting improved methods.

The comparatively slow progress of the movement is illustrated
by the variations in the number of Enclosure Acts passed before
and after 1760. But it must always be remembered that an Act of
Parliament was not the only method of enclosure, and that counties
had been enclosed, either entirely or mainly, without their inter-
vention. In Tudor times open-field arable lands and common
pastures had been sometimes enclosed not only by agreement or
purchase, but by force or fraud. Sometim@% they had been
extinguished, in whole or in part, by one individual freeholder,

who had bought up the strips of his partners. Sometimes, where
L
4A Lin > ‘

162 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND

there was no other freeholder, they had been consolidated by the
landlord, who allowed the leases to expire, and re-let the land in
several occupation. Sometimes they had been enclosed piece-
meal by a number of separate owners ; sometimes all the partners
had united in appointing commissioners, or arbitrators, who dis-
tributed the open-field in individual ownership. By these private
arrangements large tracts of land had been enclosed without the
intervention of the law, and some of these processes continued in
active operation throughout the eighteenth century. But it was
difficult to make a voluntary agreement universally binding.
Modifications of the open-field system, which were introduced
without Parliamentary sanction, were liable to be set aside by
subsequent action. Instances of breaches of voluntary agreements
are quoted by the Reporters to the Board of Agriculture. Thus,
in one Buckinghamshire parish, the inhabitants, who had obtained
an Act of Parliament for the interchange and consolidation of
intermixed holdings, but not for their enclosure, ploughed up the
dividing balks, and grew clover. But, several years later, one
of the farmers asserted his legal right to the herbage of the balks
by turning his sheep into the clover crops which had taken their
place. In another parish in the same county, the inhabitants
agreed to exchange the dual system of one crop and a fallow for a
three-year course of two crops and a fallow. But, after a few years,
the agreement was broken by one of the farmers exercising his
common rights over the fallows by feeding his sheep on the growing
crops. Such breaches of voluntary arrangements could only be
prevented by obtaining the sanction of Parliament, and so binding,
not only dissentients, but those who were minors, possessed limited
interests, or were under some other legal disability to give valid
assent.

In the seventeenth century, it had to some extent become the
practice to obtain confirmation of enclosing agreements from the
Court_of Chancery, or, where the Crown was concerned, the Royal
sanction. There is some evidence that the threat of a Chancery
suit was used as a means of obtaining consents, and that an attempt
was made to represent the decision as a legal bar to claims of common
by those who were not parties to the suit. After the Restoration
a change of practice was made, which marks, perhaps, the growing
desire to curb the power of the Crown. The jurisdiction of the
Court_of Chancery was at first supplemented, then ousted, by the

METHODS OF ENCLOSING LAND 163
SS

_private Act of Parliament. If four-fifths or sometimes a smaller
proportion, in number and value, of the parties interested, together
with the landowner and the tithe-owner, were agreed, the Enclosure
Bill received Parliamentary sanction. Commissioners were ap-
pointed who proceeded to make an award, consolidating the inter-
mixed lands of the open farm and dividing up the commons. Of
these private Enclosing Acts the earliest instance occurs in the
reign of James I. (4 Jac. I. c. 11). But it was not till the reign of
Anne that they became the recognised method of proceeding.
Even then the Acts were sometimes only confirmatory of arrange-
ments already made between the parties. In the reigns of George I.,
George II., and George III., the number increased, at first slowly,
then rapidly. Acts for enclosing only wastes, in which pasture
commons were often included, must be distinguished from those
Acts which dealt, not only with pasture-commons, but also with
open arable fields and meadows, mown and grazed by the partners
in common. Of the first class, there were, in the first sixty years
of the eighteenth century, not more than 70 Acts, while from 1760
to 1815 there were upwards of 1000. Before 1760 the number of
Acts dealing more specifically with the open-field system did not
exceed 130. Between 1760 and 1815 the number rose to upwards
of 1800. Of the area of waste, open-field and common, actually
enclosed for the first time, it is impossible to speak with any cer-
tainty. The quantity of land is often not mentioned in the
Enclosure Act, or can only be calculated from uncertain data. No
record is available for the area enclosed by private arrangement
or individual enterprise. It may, however, be safely estimated
that not less than 4 million acres were enclosed in England and
Wales within the period. Probably this figure was in reality con-
siderably exceeded ; possibly it might be, without exaggeration,
increased by two-thirds.

Before 1790, in many parts of England, the process of enclosing
open-field farms and commons had been practically completed by »
private arrangement without the expensive intervention of Parlia-
ment. At different dates, and with little or no legislative help,
the ancient system of cultivation, if it ever existed, had been almost
extinguished in the south-eastern-eounties—ofSuffolk and. Essex ;
in the southern counties of Kent and Sussex ; in the south-western
counties of Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall; in the western coun-
ties of Hereford, Monmouth, Shropshire, and Stafford; in the

164 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND

northern counties of Cheshire, Lancashire, Westmoreland, Cum-
berland, Northumberland, and Durham. No generalisation will
explain why these districts should have been enclosed sooner or
more easily than elsewhere.1 The facts remain that no Parlia-
mentary enclosures took place in Kent, Devonshire, Cornwall, or
Lancashire ; that as early as the middle of the sixteenth century
Kent, Essex, and Devonshire were stated by a Tudor writer
to be the most enclosed and wealthiest counties ;2 that in 1602
Carew, the historian of Cornwall, recorded that his countrymen “ fal
everywhere from Commons to Inclosure, and partake not of some
Eastern Tenants’ envious dispositions, who will sooner prejudice
their owne present thrift, by continuing this mingle-mangle, than
advance the Lords expectant benefit, after their terme expired ” ;*
that in 1656 Joseph Lee* mentions Essex, Hereford, Devonshire,
Shropshire, Worcester as ‘“‘ wholly enclosed’’; that in 1727 the
Rev. John Laurence says that “‘as to the Bishoprick of Durham,
which is by much the richest Part of the North, Nine Parts in Ten
are already inclosed.” 5

Since the last half of the fifteenth century the enclosing move-
ment had been continuously in operation. Why, in the eighteenth

and nineteenth centuries, was more land enclosed_b arlia-
ment in some districts than—in-others ? The answer depends on

1 The question may be stated in figures, which are collected from Dr.
Slater’s The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields (1907),
Appendix B.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, enclosures by Act of Par-
liament were made of the following areas of open-fields (arable and meadow)
and commons, in the South-East and South-West, in the West, the North-
West, and North: Suffolk, 22,206 acres; Essex, 17,393 acres; Kent, none ;
Sussex, 15,185 acres ; Somerset, 30,848 acres; Devon, none; Cornwall, none ;
Hereford, 8,168 acres; Monmouth, 1,293 acres; Shropshire, 2,310acres ; Stafford,
16,925 acres; Cheshire, 3,326 acres; Lancashire, none ; Westmoreland, 3,237
acres ; Cumberland, 8,700 acres ; Northumberland, 22,348 acres ; Durham, 4,637
acres.

During the same period the following areas of open-fields and commons
were enclosed by Act of Parliament in the Midlands, the East, and the North-
East : Bedfordshire, 91,589 acres; Buckinghamshire, 111,427 acres; Oxford-
shire, 142,238 acres ; Northamptonshire, 308,722 acres ; Warwickshire, 131,104
acres; Rutland, 43,901 acres; Leicestershire, 185,176 acres; Hast Riding of
Yorkshire, 274,479 acres; West Riding, 172,944 acres; Lincolnshire, 445,777
acres ; Norfolk, 106,043 acres ; Cambridgeshire, 87,413 acres ; Huntingdonshire,
93,366 acres.

2 Compendious Hxamination, etc., by W. S. (1549).
3 Cornwall (1602).

4 Vindication of a Regulated Enclosure (1656).

5A New System of Agriculture (1727).

VARYING DATES OF ENCLOSURES 165
\

local circumstances or agricultural conditions. Disturbances_on the
northern and western borders were. unfavourable to settled_agri-
culture, and village farms and commons never throve extensively
in the counties adjoining the borders of Scotland and Wales. In
districts which abounded in fens, marshes, moorlands or hills, the
space occupied by open- fields Wi -was necessarily limited, although the
inhabitants of the neighbourhood may have exercised over these
waste tracts rights of goose-pasture, of cutting fuel, turf, or reeds,
or, where possible, of grazing. But the land, when enclosed, was
taken in from the wild, and was, from the first, cultivated in separate
holdings. Other_districts, which naturally were clothed with
extensive woodlands or forest, were enclosed piecemeal by individual
enterprise for individual occupation. After the end of the four-
teenth century, it is unlikely that any cleared land would have been
cultivated in common. Other districts, lastly, which were indus-
trially developed by the neighbourhood of large towns, or by the
existence of some manufacturing industry, were early enclosed,
either because of the demand for animal food and dairy produce, or
because of the scarcity of purely agricultural labour.

On these general principles, before the era of Parliamentary
enclosure, may be partially explained the comparative absence or
disappearance of open-fields and pasture commons in the border
counties, in the Wealds of Surrey, Kent, Sussex, in the forest
districts of Hampshire, Essex, Warwickshire, or Nottinghamshire,
in the neighbourhood of London or Bristol, or in the clothing
districts of Devon and Somerset, of Essex, and Suffolk, or of parts
of Norfolk. No doubt enclosure of cultivated land by agreement
was at this period chiefly made for grazing and dairying purposes.
But at the same time a large addition was being continuously made
to the arable area of the country, partly by the reconversion of
grass-land to tillage after fertility had been restored by rest, partly
by the reclamation and enclosure of new land well adapted for
grain. ‘‘ Consider,’’ writes Blith, ‘‘ the Wood-lands who before
Enclosure were wont to be releeved by the Fieldon with Corn of
all sorts, And now are grown as gallant Corn Countries as be in
England.” 1 This addition to tillage necessarily affected the whole
of the old corn-growing districts, where a large acreage, more fitted
for pasture than for tillage, was kept under the plough by the
open-field system. The effect was more and more felt when in-

1 The English Improver, chap. Xiii,

166 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND

creasing facilities of communication enabled farmers to put their
land to the best use by relieving them from the old uniform
necessity of growing corn for the locality. \“

Elsewhere, the early or late enclosure of land was in the main
determined by such agricultural reasons as climate or soil. En-
closure took place first, where it paid best agriculturally. In
the moister climate of the South-west and West the rigid separa-
tion of arable from pasture was unnecessary. In some parts of
the country the suitability of the land for hops or fruit necessitated
early enclosure. Blith’s reference to the plantation of the hedge-
rows with fruit-trees in ‘‘ Worcestershire, Hereford, and Gllostershire
and great part of the county of Kent’ points to separate occupation
in the first half of the seventeenth century.t In other parts, if
corn-land was more adapted to pasture, it was, under the new con-
ditions, enclosed and laid down to grass. It was thus that the
grazing districts on the water-bearing pasture belt of the Midlands,
or the dairying districts of Gloucestershire or Wiltshire came into
separate occupation. So also, where the soil was of a quality to
respond quickly to turnips, clover, and artificial grasses, it was
enclosed in order that it might profit by the new discoveries. This
was the case on the light soils of Norfolk, where, as Houghton noted,
turnip husbandry had been introduced with success before the
close of the seventeenth century. This early use of roots is con-
firmed by Defoe,? who says of Norfolk; “‘ This part of England is
remarkable for being the first where the Feeding and Fattening of
Cattle, both Sheep as well as black Cattle, with Turnips, was first
practis’d in England.”

Where land did not appear to be so immediately susceptible to
the influence of these improvements, which were still imperfectly
understood, the question of enclosure, and of the use to which the
land was put, became mainly one of expense. Only the best and
stron was able to endure the open- -field system without
exhaustion. To separate ‘occupiers, eighteenth century improve-
ments offered new means of restoring the fertility of exhausted soil.
At the same time the revolution in stock-breeding held out new
temptations to graziers. Much worn-out arable land of indifferent
or medium quality was enclosed because its produce was declining.

1 English Improver, chap. xix.
2A Tour thro’ the whole Island of Great Britain (2nd edition, 1738), vol. i.
pp. 60-61. Defoe began his tour in 1722.

DISTRICTS ENCLOSED BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT 167

\

If the price of corn was low, it was cheaper, and more profitable for
the time, to lay it down to grass. If prices were high, the increased
margin of profits from arable farming under separate management
might cover the heavy cost of legislation and adaptation. Through-
out the eighteenth century the number of Enclosure Acts fluctuated
considerably with the advance or decline..in.the price of wheat.
Thus the serious scarcity of corn from 1765 to 1774 produced a
great crop of legislation. During the next fifteen years, the number
of Acts was kept in check by the comparative abundance of the
harvests. Once more, during the famine years of the Napoleonic
war, the Acts rapidly multiplied under the pressure of necessity »
and with the progress of agricultural skill. The need was too
urgent to admit of those private arrangements for the break-up of
open-field farms which could often only be carried out after years
of preparation. Private Acts of Parliament were more speedy in
their operation. Still the quality of the soil to a great extent con-
trolled the course of legislation. Open-fields continued longest in
the districts where the soil was chalk, or where the village farm
occupied rich corn-growing land, or where the soil was so unsuited
for grass that the prospects of increased profits from arable farming,
even in separate occupation, were doubtful. A geological map of
the country would, it is believed, supply the key to many difficulties
in the history of enclosure. &

The parts of England which were most affected by the Enclosure
Acts of the Hanoverian era were the corn-growing districts of the
East, North-east, and East Midlands. Within this area are four-
teen out of the fifteen counties which, in proportion to their size,
contained the largest acreage enclosed by Act of Parliament. The
ease with which in other districts individual occupation was sub-
stituted for common cultivation renders it difficult to answer the
question, why in these particular groups of counties the cheaper
process of private arrangement was not adopted ? No completely
satisfactory answer can be given. It was from these districts that
the greatest opposition to the enclosing movement of the Tudor
and Stewart periods had come. It was also in these districts that,
in the closing years of Elizabeth, enclosures were proceeding so
rapidly as to be restricted by a special Act of-Parliament.1 The
effect of popular outcry and consequent legislation may have been
to confine the enclosing movement to Northamptonshire, Leicester-

139 Bliz. c. 2 (1597).

168 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND

shire, and Warwickshire, where it continued to run its course in
the seventeenth century. Elsewhere in the Midlands, the counties
that formed the area from which London drew its chief supplies
of corn, could not have been converted into pasture without raising
a storm of opposition. Yet throughout the seventeenth century
and during the first three quarters of the eighteenth, enclosures
had been most profitable where arable land had been converted to
grass, and large tracts of Midland pasture were the result of this
movement before Parliamentary intervention had begun. Leicester-
shire is a conspicuous example of this conversion. It was, notes
Marshall in 1786, “ not long ago an open arable county ; now it is
a continuous sheet of greensward.’’ The vale of Belvoir, which, in
the days of Plattes, was considered to be the richest corn-district
in the country, had been laid down to grass before the time of Defoe
(1722-38).1_ He describes the whole county as given over to grazing.
** Even most of the Gentlemen are Grasiers, and in some Places the
Grasiers are so rich that they grow Gentlemen.” Yet in the first
half of the seventeenth century it had been a county of open-
fields, famous for the pigs that were fattened on its beans and
pease.2 Apart from difficulties arising from local peculiarities of
tenure, or of the shape of open-field farms, or from want of roads,
from public opinion, or special legislation, the Midland corn counties
perhaps owed some of their immunity to the interested opposition
of tithe-owners, whose assent was necessary to Parliamentary
enclosure. For the sake of the great tithes, they would always
strenuously resist any attempt by private Act to turn open-fields
into pasture farms. It was not till after 1765 that their views
underwent a change. The improvements | in arable farming, which
were now possible on separate holdings, together with the high
price _ of corn, made it probable that, even when open-fields and
commons were enclosed, the area of tillage would not be diminished.
These considerations were strengthened during the French wars of
1793-1815, which by the stoppage of foreign corn supplies added
new reasons for seeking legislative aid in enclosure.

Up to the accession of George III. (1760) prices of corn ruled low.
More than once in the preceding period (1700-60) loud complaints
were heard of agricultural depression, of farmers unable to pay

1 Tour, vol. ii. pp. 332, 335.

2The same remark is made by Professor Bradley in his Gentleman and
Farmer’s Guide for the Increase and Improvement of Cattle (1729), p. 75.

AN INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATOR 169
\

their rents, of the small gentry forced to sell their estates, of land-
lords compelled by loss of income to curtail their establishments.
As yet there was no scarcity caused by population outstripping pro-
duction, no increased demand for food supplies from great industrial
centres. But without these spurs to farming progress, preparations
for advance were being made, and far-reaching improvements in
the cultivation of arable land had been already tested or initiated
by men like Jethro Tull and Lord Townshend.

In the progress of scientific farming Tull is one of the most
remarkable of pioneers. His method of drilling wheat and roots
in rows was not generally adopted till many years after his death.
But the main principles which he laid down in his Horse-Hoeing
Husbandry (1733) proved to be the principles on which was based
an agricultural revolution in tillage. The “greatest individual
improver ”’ that British agriculture had ever known, he sought to
discover scientific reasons for observed results of particular practices.
He was thus led to strike out for himself new and independent lines
of investigation. The chemistry of plant-life was in its infancy,
the science of vegetable physiology an almost untrodden field of
knowledge. Into_ ‘these comparatively unexplored regions Tull
advanced alone, and, by minute observation of nature and stubborn
tenacity of purpose, he advanced far. Considering his difficulties
and disadvantages, it is a remarkable proof of his real genius that
he should have discovered so much. He lived in a solitary farm-
house, remote from such scientific aid as the age afforded, or from
friends in whom he could confide. His microscope was “ very
ordinary’; his appliances were self-made; his experiments
thought out for himself. He made his observations and notes,
tortured by the “stone, and other diseases as incurable and almost
as cruel.” His labourers, by whom he was, metaphorically,
“insulted, assaulted, kicked, cuffed and bridewelled,” tried his
patience beyond endurance. His son turned out an extravagant
spendthrift who ended his days in the Fleet Prison. TIll-health and
misfortune made him irritable. His sensitive nature was galled
alike by the venomous criticism of the book,! in which he published
the results of his thirty years’ experience as a farmer, and by its
shameless plagiarism. Yet he never lost his confidence that his

1The new Horse-Houghing Husbandry, 1731. (Five chapters of the sub-
sequent book which were pirated and re-printed in Ireland.) New Horse-
Hoing Husbandry, 1733. Supplement, 1740. William Cobbett edited and
published the Horse-Hoeing Husbandry in 1822: 2nd edition, 1829.

170 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND

“‘ practice would one day become the general husbandry of
England.”

The son of a Berkshire landowner, Jethro Tull was born at
Basildon in 1674. From Oxford, which he left without taking a
degree, he entered Gray’s Inn as a law student, made the grand
tour of Europe, and was called to the Bar in 1699. Scholar,
musician, traveller, lawyer, he became a farmer not by choice but
from necessity. In_1699 he settled down with his newly married
wife at “ Howberry’ Farm? in the parish of Crowmarsh, near
Wallingford. There he lived ten years. In 1709 he moved to Mount
Prosperous, a hill-farm in the parish of Shalbourn, on the borders
of Berkshire and Wiltshire. ‘Two years later, the failure of his health
drove him abroad to save his life. Returning in 1714 to Mount
Prosperous, he remained there till his death in 1740, living in a house,
covered with home-made glazed tiles, which Arthur Young, who
visited the place fifty years later, described as a “‘ wretched hovel.”

At Crowmarsh Tull invented his drill. As a gentleman-farmer
he found himself at € the mercy | of his farm-servants. From his own
experience he verified the truth of the saying :

“He who by the plough would thrive
; Must either hold himself or drive.”
He determined to plant his whole farm with sainfoin. But “ seed
was scarce, dear and bad, and enough could scarce be got to sow,
as was usual, seven bushels to the acre.”’ He set himself to conquer
the difficulty. By constant observation and experiment he learned
_ the difference between good and bad seed, as well as the advantages
of care in selection, of cleaning, steeping, and change ; he also proved
that a thin sowing produced the thickest crop, and discovered the
exact depth at which the seed throve best. “‘ So,” he says, “I
caused channels to be made, and sowed a very aman proportion of
seed, covered exactly. This was a great success.” But it was also
an innovation, and his labourers struck in a body. Tull refused to
be beaten. He set his inventive faculty to work “ to contrive an
engine to plant sainfoin more faithfully than hands would do.”
His knowledge of the mechanism of an organ stood him in good
stead. The groove, tongue, and spring of the sounding board
suggested the idea of an implement which delivered the seed
through notched barrels. Behind was attached a bush harrow

1Tt is remarkable that this farm now (1912) contains one of the most
highly cultivated pieces of land in the world.

INVENTION OF THE CORN-DRILL 171
\

which covered the seed. The machine answered its purpose, and
he afterwards introduced several improvements of his original plan.
The originality of his invention cannot justly be disputed, though
his enemies, and he had many, asserted that he brought the machine
from abroad or had been preceded by Plat, Plattes or Worlidge.
All four inventors saw the advantage of sowing not broadcast but
in rows. Both Plat and Plattes were setters, rather than drillers,
of corn, and they took for their model the dibbing of beans or peas.
Plat seems to have invented a board, to which were fixed iron
dibbers. Something of this sort is depicted on the title-page of
Edward Maxey’s New Instruction 1 (1601). Gabriel Plattes designed
a machine to punch holes in the land as it went along. But, as is
pointed out in Hartlib’s Legace, the author of which suggested
hoeing the furrows by hand, the machine would have been prac-
tically useless in wet and heavy land. Neither Plat nor Plattes
contemplated a mechanical sowing ; both intended the seed to be
deposited by hand. In this respect Worlidge’s drill was an advance
on his predecessors. He placed coulters in front of the seed-boxes,
from which the seed was deposited through barrels into furrows.
But he never made or tried his implement. When Professor Brad-
ley in 1727 constructed a machine from Worlidge’s drawing, he
found that it would not work. To Tull, therefore, belongs the
credit of the first drill which served any practical purpose.

Tull’s many mechanical inventions were less valuable than the
reasons which he gave for their employment. His implements
were speedily superseded ; his principles of agriculture remain.
During his foreign travels he was impressed with the cultivation
of vineyards in the south of France, where frequent ploughings
between parallel rows of vines not only cleaned the land, but
worked and stirred the food-beds of the plants until the vintage
approached maturity. Tull determined to extend the principles
of vine-culture to the crops of the English farm. He argued that
tillage was equally necessary before and.after sowing. When crops
were sown, nature at once began to undo the effect of previous
ploughings and sowings. The earth united, coalesced, consolidated,
and so shut out the air and water from the roots, and decreased
the food supply at the moment when the growing plants most
needed increased nourishment. To some extent the use of farm-

1A New Instruction of Plowing and Setting of Corne, handled in manner
of a Dialogue betweene a Ploughman and a Scholler.

172 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND

yard manure kept the land friable; but it also stimulated the
growth of weeds. The better course, therefore, was to keep_ the
the food area of the growing crops. So. long as wheat and turnips
were sown broadcast, this method could not be satisfactorily
employed. But if they were drilled in rows, divided by sufficiently
wide intervals, the principles of vine culture could be profitably
applied. In two ways the crops benefited by constant tillage.
In the first place, the land was kept clean from weeds, and so saved
from exhaustion. In the second place, the repeated pulverisation
of the soil admitted air, rain-water, and dews to the roots of the
plants, and extended the range from which their lateral growths
drew their food supplies. In some respects Tull’s system failed.
His rows of thinly sown wheat, for instance, were drilled so far
apart that the plants were slow to mature, and therefore, if sown late
in the year, were more susceptible to blight. But for turnips his
method was admirable. Incidentally also he found that his “ drill
husbandry ” was a substitute not only for fallows, but for farm-
yard dung, which he dreaded as a weed-carrier. Without fallows or
manure, he grew on the same land, by constant tillage, for thirteen
years in succession heavier wheat crops, from one-third of the
quantity of seed, than his neighbours could produce by following
the accepted routine. By this discovery he anticipated one of the
most startling results of the Rothamsted experiments.

The chief _legacies which Jethro Tull left to his successors were
clean _farming, economy in seedings, drilling, and the maxim that
the more the irons are among the roots the better for the crop.
It was along these lines that agriculture advanced. On open-
field farmers who sowed their seed broadcast, thickly, and at
varying depths, Tull’s experiments were lost. Equally fruitless,
so far as his immediate neighbours were concerned, was his demon-
stration of the value of sainfoin and turnips, or the drilling of
wheat and roots. Even his system of drilling roots was neglected
in England, till it had been tested and adopted in Scotland.

It was not till Tull’s principles were put in practice by large
landlords in various parts of the country that their full advantages
became apparent. In England this was the work of men like Lord
Townshend at Raynham in Norfolk, Lord Ducie at Woodchester
in Gloucestershire, or Lord Halifax at Abbs Court near Walton-
on-Thames. In Scotland the “ Tullian system ”’ was enthusiasti-

FARMING A FASHION 173

\
cally preached by the Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of
Agriculture in Scotland (founded 1723, dissolved 1745), by Lord
Cathcart, and by Mr. Hope of Rankeillor. In the Heart of Mid-
lothian, Scott is true to the spirit, if not to the details, of history
when he credits the Duke of Argyll with a keen interest in all
branches of farming and the introduction into Inverness-shire of a
herd of Devonshire cattle. Agriculture had for the moment become
a fashion in society, a part, perhaps, of the artificial movement which
in 1 gardening ‘created the Landscape School. Tull’s system was
discussed at Court. It was explained to George II., and therefore
interested Lady Suffolk. The practical Queen Caroline subscribed
to the publication of the Horse-Hoeing Husbandry. Pope loved to
“‘ nlay the philosopher among cabbages and turnips.” Sir Robert
Walpole, it is said, opened the letters of his farm steward before he
broke the seals of correspondence on State affairs; Bolingbroke
caused Dawley Farm to be painted with trophies of ricks, spades,
and prongs, and, propped between two haycocks, read Swift’s
letters, uplifting his eyes to heaven, not in admiration of the author
but in fear of rain. ‘‘ Dawley,” said his political opponents, “ has
long been famous for a Great Cry and little Wool. Tup Harry
become Mutton master.” +

Other landowners threw themselves energetically into the practical
work of agricultural improvement. Charles, second Viscount _
Townshend, may be taken as a type of the reforming landlords who
took the lead in farming their estates. ~ Born in 1674, “he died in
1738, having succeeded to the title and estates of his father when
a child of thirteen years old. In his early life, he had played a
prominent part in the political history of the country at a critical
period. Lord Privy Seal under William III., he served as a Com-
missioner to treat for the Union of England and Scotland, and, as
a joint plenipotentiary with Marlborough, signed the Peace of
Gertruydenberg in 1709. In the same year, as Ambassador at the
Hague, he negotiated the famous Barrier Treaty. Under George I.
and George II., he acted as Secretary of State, was appointed Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland, and, as joint Secretary of State with Walpole,
directed the foreign policy of Great Britain.

In 1730 Lord Townshend retired from political life to Raynham
in Norfolk. There he devoted himself to the care of his estates,
experimenting in the farming practices which he had observed

1 The Hyp Doctor, No. 32, July 20, 1731.

174 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND

abroad, and devoting himself, above all, to improvements in the
rotation of crops, and to the field cultivation of turnips and clover,
which, in the preceding half century, had been successfully intro-
duced in the county. His land mainly consisted of rush-grown
marshes, or sandy wastes where a few sheep starved and “ two
rabbits struggled for every blade of grass.”” The brief but exhaustive
list of its productions is ‘“‘ nettles and warrens.” Townshend
revived the ancient but almost obsolete practice of marling the
light lands of Norfolk. Farmers believed that marl was “ good
for the father, bad for the son,”’ till he proved its value on the
sandy soil of the county. The tide of fashion set once more in its
favour, and farmers found another proverbial saying for their
purpose :
** He who marls sand

May buy the land ;

He that marls moss

Suffers no loss ;

He that marls clay
Throws all away.”

By the use of marl alone Young calculates that “‘ four hundred
thousand acres have been turned into gardens.’ Following the
lines of Jethro Tull, Townshend drilled and horse-hoed his turnips
instead of sowing them broadcast. He was also the initiator. of
the so-called Norfolk, or four-course, system of cropping, in which
cereals, roots, and artificial grasses were alternated. The intro-
duction of roots and grasses encouraged the farmer to observe the
useful rule of never taking two corn crops in succession, saved him
from the necessity of leaving a portion of land every year in unpro-
ductive fallow, enabled him to carry more stock and maintain it
without falling off during the winter months. For the light sands
of Norfolk turnips possessed a special value. Roots, fed on the
ground by sheep, fertilised and consolidated the poorest soil.
Another portion of the crop, drawn off and stored for winter keep,
helped the farmer to keep more stock, to obtain more manure, to
enrich the land, to increase its yield, to verify the truth of the
proverb ‘ A full bullock-yard and a full fold make a full granary.”
Farming in a circle, unlike arguing, proved a productive process.

So zealous was Townshend’s advocacy of turnips as the pivot
of agricultural improvement, that he gained the nickname of
“Turnip” Townshend, and supplied Pope with an example for
his Horatian Illustrations, (Bk. ii. Epist. ii. ll. 270-9) :

A CHAMPION OF TURNIPS 175

NX
“Why, of two brothers, rich and restless one
Ploughs, burns, manures, and toils from sun to sun ;
The other slights, for women, sports, and wines,
All Townshend’s turnips and all Grosvenor’s mines,

* * * * * * * * * *

Is known alone to that Directing Power
Who forms the genius in the natal hour.”

Townshend’s efforts to improve his estates were richly rewarded.
On the sandy soil of his own county, his methods were peculiarly
successful. Furze-capped warrens were in a few years converted
into tracts of well-cultivated productive land. Those who followed
his example realised fortunes. In thirty years one farm rose in
rental value from £180 to £800; another, rented by a warrener at
£18 a year, was let to a farmer at an annual rent of £240; a farmer
named Mallett is said to have made enough off a holding of 1500
acres to buy an estate of the annual value of £1800. Some farmers
were reported to be worth ten thousand pounds. But the example
only spread into other counties by slow degrees. Outside Norfolk,
both landlords and farmers still classed turnips with rats as
Hanoverian innovations, and refused their assistance with Jacobite
indignation. Hven in Townshend’s own county, it was not till the
close of the century that the practice was at all universally adopted ;
still later was it before the improved methods were accepted which
converted Lincolnshire from a rabbit-warren or a swamp into corn-
fields and pasture.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE STOCK-BREEDER’S ART AND ROBERT BAKEWELL
(1725-95).

Necessity for improving the live-stock of the country; sheep valued for
their wool, cattle for power of draught or yield of milk; beef and mutton
the growing need: Robert Bakewell the agricultural opportunist ; his
experiments with the Black Horse, the Leicester Longhorns, and the New
Leicesters ; rapid progress of stock-breeding : sacrifice of wool to mutton.

WirnHovt the aid of turnips the mere support of live-stock had
been in winter and spring a difficult problem ; to fatten sheep and
cattle for the market was in many districts a practical impossibility.
The introduction, therefore, of the field cultivation of roots, clover,
and artificial grasses proved the pivot of agricultural progress. It
enabled farmers to carry more numerous, bigger, and heavier stock ;
more stock gave more manure; more manure raised larger crops ;
larger crops supported still larger flocks and herds. Thus to the
hopeful enthusiasts of the close of the eighteenth century the agri-
cultural circle seemed capable of almost indefinite and always pro-
fitable expansion.

But recent improvements in arable farming could not yield their
full profits till the live-stock of the country was also improved.
The necessary revolution in the breeding and rearing of stock was
mainly the work of Robert Bakewell (1725-95), a Leicestershire
farmer, living at Dishley, near Loughborough. Its results were
even more remarkable than those which followed from the new
methods of Tull and Townshend. Bakewell’s improvements were
also more immediately accepted by agriculturists. The slow
adoption of improved practices in tillage was mainly due to caution ;
in some degree, also, it was due to the fact that the innovators
were, if not amateurs, gentlemen-farmers.t On the other hand,

1JIn 1756 or 1757 Mr. Pringle, a retired army surgeon, introduced the
drilling of turnips on his estate near Coldstream in Berwickshire. His crops

EXISTING BREEDS OF SHEEP 177
\

the improved principles of stock-breeding were more readily
accepted, not only because their superiority was at once manifest
to the eye, but because they emanated from the practical brain of
a professional farmer. Yet for open-field farmers they were of
little value. As sheep and cattle increased in size and weight, and
were bred for more speedy conversion into mutton and beef, they
needed better and more abundant food than village farms could
supply. Thus the improvements of Bakewell, like those of Tull
and Townshend, added a new impulse to the progress of enclosures.

Up to the middle of the eighteenth century sheep had been
valued, agriculturally for their manure in the fold, commercially
for their skins and, above all, for their wool. Wool was in fact
~the chief source of trading profit to English farmers. Other forms
of agricultural produce were raised as much for home consumption
as for sale. But the trade in raw or manufactured wool, both at
home and abroad, had been for centuries the most important of
English industries. To the golden fleece the carcase was sacrificed ;
the mutton as food was comparatively neglected. As wool-pro-
ducing animals sheep were classified into short wools and long wools.
Of these two classes, short-wooled sheep were by far the most
numerous, and were scattered all over England. Small in frame,
active, hardy, able to pick up a living on the scantiest food, patient
of hunger, they were the sheep of open-field farmers; they were
the breeds formed by centuries of far travelling, close feeding on
scanty pasturage, and a starvation allowance of hay in winter.
Such were the “ heath-croppers’’ of Berkshire—small ill-shaped
sheep which, however, produced “ very sweet mutton.’ In some
counties, as, for instance, Buckinghamshire, open-field farmers
hired sheep, with or without a shepherd, for folding on their arable
land. The flocks, hired from Bagshot Heath, were fed, partly on
the commons, partly on the arable fallows, where they were folded
every night from April to October. No money passed. The flock-
master was paid by the feed; the farmer by the folding. The one
made his profit by the Boilie other by the manure. Sometimes
were superior to those of the neighbouring farmers. But none followed his
example. In 1762 a farmer named William Dawson adopted the practice
on his farm at Frogden*in Roxburghshire. ‘‘ No sooner did Mr. Dawson
(an actual farmer) adopt the same system, than it was immediately followed,
not only by several farmers in his vicinity, but by those very farmers adjoining
Mr, Pringle, whose crops they had seen for ten or twelve years so much superior
to their own” (General view of the Agriculture of the County of Northumberland,

by J. Bailey and G. Culley, 3rd edition (1805), p. 102).
M

178 STOCKBREEDER’S ART AND ROBERT BAKEWELL

small men who had rights of common, or had acquired them from
commoners, drove their flocks from open-field to open-field, folding
them on the fallow lands of the village farm and receiving from
the occupiers of the fallows 1s. a week per score or leave to graze
on the commons during some part of the winter. Nearly every
breeding county in England had its local favourites, adapted to their
environment of soil, climate, and geographical configuration. For
fineness of wool, the Ryeland or Herefordshire sheep now held the
first place in the manufacture of superfine broad-cloth, though in
the fourteenth century the fleece of the Morfe Common sheep of
Shropshire had commanded the highest prices. Sussex South
Downs, inferior in size and shape to their present type, were also
famed for the excellence of their soft, fine, curly wools. Dorsets;t
already prized for their early lambs, supplied Ilminster with the
material for its second, or livery, cloths. West-country clothiers
drew their supplies, partly from Wales, partly from the large,
horned, and black-faced Wiltshires, from the Exmoors, Dartmoors,
or Devonshire Notts, the Mendips of Somerset, the Dean Foresters
of Gloucester, or the Ryelands of Herefordshire. The eastern
counties had their native short-wooled Norfolk and Suffolk breeds.
The North had its Cheviots, its Northumberland Muggs, its Lanca-
shire Silverdales, its Cumberland Herdwicks, its Cheshire Delameres.
Here and there, some local breed was especially famous for the
quality of its mutton, like that of Banstead or of Bagshot in Surrey,
of Portland in Dorsetshire, of Clun Forest in Shropshire, or of the
mountain sheep of Wales. But, speaking generally, it was by their
fleeces only that sheep were distinguished. The local varieties of
short-wools differed widely from one another. In appearance the
long-wools were more uniform in type ; all were polled, white-faced,
and white-legged ; all were large-framed, and, from more abundant
food, heavier in carcase and in fleece; in all the wool was long,
straight, and strong. Less widely distributed than the other class,
they were also by far the least numerous. In the eighteenth century
they probably did not exceed more than one-fourth of the total
number of sheep in the country. But the superior weight of their
fleeces made their produce more than one-third of the total clip.
Among the long-wools the Cotswolds were, at this time, pre-
eminent. Other varieties, better adapted to the special conditions
of their respective counties, were the Lincolns, Leicesters, Devon-
shire Bamptons, and the Romney Marsh sheep of Kent.

EXISTING BREEDS OF CATTLE 179

With these different breeds, both short and long wools, there was
abundant scope for experiment and improvement. Some effort
had been made at the close of the seventeenth century, as has
been already noticed, to improve the lustrous fleeces of Lincolns,
and to remedy the bareness of their legs and bellies. But, from
the grazier’s point of view, no breeder had yet attempted to obtain
a more profitable shape. If any care was shown in the selection
of rams and ewes, the choice was guided by fanciful points which
possessed no practical value. Thus Wiltshire breeders demanded
a horn which fell back so as to form a semicircle, beyond which
the ear projected ; Norfolk flockmasters valued the length and
spiral form of the horn and the blackness of the face and legs ;
Dorsetshire shepherds staked everything on the horn projecting
in front of the ear ; champions of the South Downs condemned all
alike, and made their grand objects a speckled face and leg and no
horn at all.

In cattle, again, no true standard of shape was recognised. Size
was the only criterion of merit. ‘‘ Nothing would please,” wrote
George Culley in 1786, “‘ but Elephants or Giants.”?! The qualities
for which animals were valued were not propensity to fatten or
early maturity, but their milking capacity or their power of draught.
The pail and the plough set the standard ; the butcher was ignored.
Each breeding county, however, had its native varieties, classified
into Middle-horns, prevailing in the South and West of England,
in Wales and in Scotland; Long-horns, in the North-west of
England and the Midlands; and Short-horns, in the North-east,
Yorkshire, and Durham.

The Middle-horns in the South and West of England were red
cattle of a uniform type; the North Devons, nimble and free of
movement, were unrivalled in the yoke; the Herefords, not yet
bred with white faces, were heavier animals which fattened to a
greater weight; the Sussex breed came midway in size between
the two. None of the three were remarkable for the quantity of
their milk. Other middle-horned breeds were the black Pembrokes,
like their Cornish relatives, excellent for the small farmer, and
the Red Glamorgans, which in the eighteenth century were highly
esteemed as an all-round breed. Every year thousands of the
black Angleseys were swum across the Menai Straits to the main-

1 Quoted by Arthur Young in his Lecture on the Husbandry of Three Famous
Farmers (1811), pp. 10-11.

180 STOCKBREEDER’S ART AND ROBERT BAKEWELL

land. Scotland had its West Highlanders; its Ayrshires, second
to none as milkers; its Galloways and its Anguses, originally
middle-horned but now becoming polled, which were driven south-
wards to the October and November fairs of Norfolk and Suffolk
to be fattened for the London markets. On these imported Gallo-
ways were founded the Norfolk breed of polled cattle, and the
Suffolk Duns once famous all over England for their milking
qualities. The North-west of England and the Midlands were
occupied by the Long-horns. Of these the most celebrated were
the Lancashires, or Cravens, so called from their home in the
corner of the West Riding of Yorkshire which borders on Lancashire
and Westmoreland. To this breed some attention had, as is noticed
in the Legacie, been paid in the seventeenth century. To the same
stock belonged the brindled or grizzled Staffordshires, valued, like
the Cravens, for the dairy and for meat. The North of Lincoln-
‘shire, the East Riding of Yorkshire, and Durham were famous for
the enormous size of their short-horned cattle, which were extra-
ordinary milkers. The Holderness breed, as it was called before
its establishment on the banks of the Tees, were “ more like an
ill-made black horse than an ox or cow.” 1 The cattle were badly
shaped, long-bodied, bulky in the coarser points, small in the prime
parts. But they satisfied the taste of the eighteenth century
grazier, because their gigantic frames offered plenty of bone on
which to lay flesh. They were undoubtedly a breed of foreign
origin. ‘Tradition relates that, towards the end of the seventeenth
century, a bull and some cows were introduced into the Holderness
district from the Low Countries. But the introduction must have
been of an earlier date. Lawson in his New Orchard (1618) says:
‘“* The goodnesse of the soile in Howle, or Hollow-, derness in York-
shire is well knowne to all that know the River Humber and the
huge bulkes of their Cattell there.” It is probably to this intro-
duction of foreign blood that Child alludes in his Letter in Hartlib’s
Legacie (1651), when he says that little attention was paid to
breeding except in the north-western and north-eastern counties.
To the same stock belonged the “ long-legged short-horn’d Cow of
the Dutch breed,’ which Mortimer (1707) selected as the best
breed for milking. Probably, also, the famous ‘“‘ Lincolnshire Ox ”
was one of these Holderness Dutch-crossed animals. This beast
was exhibited, as the Advertisement sets out, “ with great satisfac-

1 Culley’s Observations on Live Stock (1786), p. 30.

HORSE-BREEDING er 18]

tion, at the University of Cambridge,”’ in the reign of Queen Anne.
He was ‘“‘ Nineteen Hands High, and Four Yards Long from his
Face to his Rump. The like Beast for Bigness was never seen in
the World before. Vivat Regina!”

Stock-breeding, as applied to both cattle and sheep, was the
haphazard union of nobody’s son with everybody’s daughter. On
open-field farms parish bulls were only selected for the quality
in which Mr. Shandy’s pet, so strenuously denounced by Obadiah,
was alleged to be wanting. When prizes were offered for the
longest legs, it is not surprising that all over the country were
scattered tall, raw-boned, wall-sided cattle, and lean, leggy,
unthrifty sheep. Our ancestors, however, were not unwise in their
generation. Length of leg was necessary, when animals had to
traverse miry lanes and “foundrous”’ highways, and roam for
miles in search of food. Size of bone served the ox in good stead
when he had to draw a heavy plough through stiff soil. But a
time was rapidly approaching when beef and mutton were to be
more necessary than power of draught or fineness of wool. Bake-
well was the agricultural opportunist who saw the impending change,
and knew how it should be met. By providing meat for the million,
he contributed as much to the wealth of the country as Arkwright
or Watt. There is some foundation for the statement that many
monuments have been reared in Westminster Abbey to the memory
of men who less deserved the honour than Robert Bakewell.

Cart-horses also shared Bakewell’s attention. Before his day
principles of breeding had been little studied except in the interests
of sport. In the reign of Richard II. the principal breeding counties
had been Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and the East and West
Ridings of Yorkshire. Men in armour needed big weight-carrying
horses. But in the fifteenth century, horses, like the rest of English
live-stock, seem to have dwindled in size. The legislature was
alarmed ; Henry VIII. attempted to improve their height by the
importation of the best foreign breeds, and by sumptuary laws
which prescribed the number and height of the horses that were
to be kept by various classes of his subjects. Elizabeth’s introduc-
tion of coaches created a new need ; if the invention of gunpowder
and the disuse of armour displaced the ‘“‘ great horse’ in war, he
found a new place between the shafts. Shakespeare’s plays
illustrate some of the changes which approximated the Stewart
standard of horse-flesh to modern ideals. The courser, which in

182 STOCKBREEDER’S ART AND ROBERT BAKEWELL

time of war had endured “ the shock of wrathful iron arms,’ ! and
in peace was the “ foot-cloth”’ horse,? and three times stumbled
under Lord Hastings? gives place to the “ prince of palfreys ”’
who “ trots the air’ and makes the earth sing as he touches it with
his elastic tread* As highways improved, travellers journeyed
more easily and more often. The ambling roadster, whose artificial
gait was comparatively easy, was supplanted by the hack; the
coach-horse and the waggon-horse began to dispute the monopoly
of the lumbering “‘ great horse’’ and the pack-horse. Sport was
also adapting itself to the changing conditions of society. Racing
and hunting became fashionable. Though Shakespeare had heard
“‘ of riding wagers,
When horses have been nimbler than the sands
That run i’ the clock’s behalf.” >
and was aware that “switch and spur” © were plied in a “ wild-
goose chase ”’ on the Cotswold Hills, he knew nothing of the modern
race-course. Races, then, were trials rather of endurance than of
speed. Nor was pace much needed in Tudor hunting; a “ good
continuer,”’’ or, as we might say, a good stayer, was more necessary.
In coursing the hare, only the greyhounds must be fleeter than
‘poor Wat.’ The red deer was followed by hounds “slow of
pursuit ” § and by men armed with leaping-poles, except on those
rare occasions when the great hart was hunted “at force.” At
hawkings, unless the long-winged peregrine flew down wind, horse-
men were not pushed to the gallop; the short-winged goshawk
exacted from his pursuers no turn of speed. But as agriculture
advanced, the red deer’s covert was destroyed, and his extermination
demanded as an inveterate foe to the crops. So, too, the sport of
falconry was doomed, when hedgerows and enclosures displaced
the broad expanse of open-fields, and the partridge no longer
cowered in the stubble by the edge of the turf-balk under the
tinkling bells of the “‘ towering ”’ falcon. Another beast of the
chase and other means of capture were needed. Shakespeare stood
on ‘“‘no quillets how to slay’ ?° a fox with snares and gins. But

1 Ric. II. Act i. Se. 3, 1. 136. 22 Hen. VI. Act iv. Se. 7, 1. 52.

3 Ric. III. Act iii. Se. 4, 1. 83.

4Hen. V. Act iii. Se. 7, 1. 17. Comp. also Ven. and Ad. st. 50, where
Blundevill is closely copied.

5 Cymb. Act iii. Se. 2, ll. 72-4. § Rom. and Jul. Act ii. Se. 4, 1. 75.

? Much Ado, Acti. Se. 1, 1. 149. 8 Mid. N. D. Act iv. Se. 1, 1. 129.

% Macb. Act ii. Se. 4, 1. 12. 102 Hen. VI. Act iii. Se. 1, 1. 261.

HORSES FOR “ COURSE, CHASE, WAR, OR TRAVEL” 183

Ni
the fox was no foe to crops; hedgerows only added zest to his
pursuit ; the new sport satisfied the new conditions, and demanded
the production of the modern hunter.

The seventeenth century saw some of the conditions created
which have developed the various types in horses of to-day. James
I. reduced racing to rules; Charles I. established races at New-
market ; Oliver Cromwell kept his stud ; Charles II. introduced the
** Royal Mares.’’ Changes in the art of war demanded a lighter
and more active cavalry. Fox-hunting had become a passion with
the country gentry. Coaches travelled more rapidly. Oxen were
less used on the farm. During the same century, foreign breeds
were extensively imported. Arabs were favourites of James I.
But the authority of the Duke of Newcastle, who disliked the breed,
was paramount in matters of horse-flesh.1_ Barbs, or Turks were
preferred till the Godolphin and Darley Arabians proved worthy
rivals to the Byerly Turk. Other breeds were largely imported
from Naples, Sardinia, Spain, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Flanders,
and Libya. So great was the admixture of blood, that Bradley,
writing in 1727, thinks the true-bred English horse hardly exists,
“unless we may account the Horses to be such that are bred wild
in some of our Forests and among the Mountains.” ? Horses
intended for ‘‘ the Course, the Chase, War or Travel’ were already
carefully studied. But horses for farm use were as yet despised.
De Grey* speaks with contempt of horses for the cart, the plough,
the pack-saddle, and Bradley ignores them altogether.

It was with the heavy Black-horse of the Midland counties that
Bakewell conducted his experiments. The breed had long been
known, and had doubtless “helped to supply mounts to mediaeval
knights. Early in the eighteenth century the breed had been
improved by the importation of six Zealand mares. But the long
back and long thick hairy legs were still characteristic. Defoe
speaks of the Leicestershire horse as the “‘ largest in England, being
generally the great black Coach-Horses and Dray-Horses, of which
so great a Number are continually brought up to London.” Bake-
well’s object was to correct the type to that which was best suited

1 Methode et Invention Nouvelle de dresser les Chevaux (1658). New-

castle’s experiments were made with Barbs. The Duke also published in
1667 A New Method and Extraordinary Invention to Dress Horses, ete.

2 Gentleman and Farmers Guide, p. 249.

3 The Compleat Horseman and Expert Ferrier, by Thomas de Grey (5th ed.
1684), p. 8.

184 STOCKBREEDER’S ART AND ROBERT BAKEWELL

for draft. Strength and activity rather than height and weight
were his aim. In his hands the Black Horse developed a thick
short carcase on clean short legs. Marshall, who visited Dishley
in 1784, grows enthusiastic over ‘‘ the grandeur and symmetry of
form ” displayed in the stallion named K. “ He was, in reality,
the fancied war-horse of the German painters ; who, in the luxuri-
ance of imagination, never perhaps excelled the grandeur of this
horse.”” The Midland horses were generally sold as two-year-olds
to the farmers of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Berkshire, and
Wiltshire, who broke them into harness, worked them lightly on
the land, and sold them at five or six to London dealers. The
practice may account for some of the extravagant plough-teams,
which agricultural writers of the eighteenth century often notice
and condemn.

Born in 1725, Bakewell was barely twenty when he began his
experiments in stock-breeding. He succeeded to the sole manage-
ment of his father’s farm in 1760. Ten years later, when Arthur
Young, armed with an introduction from the Marquis of Rockingham,
visited Dishley, Bakewell must have somewhat resembled the
typical English yeoman who figures on jugs of Staffordshire
pottery: ‘a tall, broad-shouldered, stout man of brown-red com-
plexion, clad in a loose brown coat, scarlet waistcoat, leather
breeches, and top-boots.’’ Visitors from all parts of the world
assembled to see his farm—his water-canals, his plough-team of
cows, his irrigated meadows on which mowers were busy from May
to Christmas, and, above all, his live-stock—his famous black
stallion, his bull ‘‘ Two-penny,” and his ram “‘ Two-pounder.” All
who came were astonished at the results which they saw, at the
docility of the animals, at the kindness with which they were
treated. But, if they hoped to learn from Bakewell’s lips the
principles which are now the axioms of stock-breeding, they went
away disappointed. He was a keen man of business. The secrets
of his success were jealously guarded, except from the old shepherd
to whom they were confided. So careful was he to keep the lead
in his own hands that he adopted the practice of only letting his
stallions, bulls, and rams by the season, and, when his best bred
sheep were past service and fatted and sold to the butcher, he is
said to have infected them with the rot in order to prevent their
use for breeding purposes. So reports Arthur Young.1 Round

1 Farmers Tour through the East of England (1771), vol. i. p. 118.

“SMALL IN SIZE, GREAT IN VALUE” 185

\
the hall of his house were arranged skeletons of his most celebrated
animals ; from the walls hung joints, preserved in pickle, which
illustrated such points as smallness of bone or thickness of fat. As
there was no inn in the village, he seems to have kept open house
for his visitors. He was never married. In his kitchen he enter-
tained Russian princes, French and German royal dukes, British
peers, and sightseers of every degree. Yet he never altered the
routine of his daily life. “‘ Breakfast at eight; dinner at one;
supper at nine; bed at eleven o’clock; at half-past ten, let who
would be there, he knocked out his last pipe.”” Very large sums of
money passed through his hands. Yet, if the entry in the Gentle-
man’s Magazine* refers to him, he was bankrupt in 1776, and so
lavish was his hospitality that he is said to have died in poverty?

In the treatment of live-stock for the butcher Bakewell’s object
was to breed animals which weighed heaviest in the best joints
and most quickly repaid the cost of the food they consumed. He
sought to discover the animal which was the best machine for
turning food into money. ‘‘ Small in size and great in value,”
or the Holkham toast of ““ Symmetry well covered,”’ was the motto
of his experiments. In his view the essentials were the valuable
joints, and he swept away as non-essentials all the points on which
fashion or prejudice had hitherto concentrated, such as head, neck,
horn, leg, or colour. The points which he wished to develop and
perpetuate were beauty combined with utility of form, quality of
flesh, and propensity to fatness. To attain these objects he struck
out a new line for himself. Crossing was then understood to mean
the mixture of two alien breeds, one of which was relatively inferior.
Bakewell adopted a different principle, because he regarded this
form of crossing as an adulteration rather than as an improvement.
He bred in-and-in, using not merely animals of the same native
breed and line of descent, but of the same family. He thus secured
the union of the finest specimens of the breed which he had chosen
as the best, selected for the possession of the points which he
wished to reproduce or strengthen.

1In the Gent. Mag. for Nov. 1776, appears the following entry in the list
of bankrupts: “‘ R. Bakewell, Dishley, Leicestersh. dealer.’ (p. 531).

? Other contemporary references to Bakewell, besides those quoted, will
be found in the Gent. Mag. vols. xiii. pt. ii. p. 792, and Ixv. pt. ii. pp. 969-70 ;
Marshall’s Midland Counties, vol. i. pp. 292-493 etc.; Annals of Agriculture,
vol. vi. (1786), pp. 466-98; Arthur Young’s Husbandry of Three Famous
Farmers (1811); George Culley’s Observations on Live Stock (1786).

186 STOCKBREEDER’S ART AND ROBERT BAKEWELL

It was with sheep that Bakewell achieved his greatest success.
When he began his stock-breeding experiments, he selected his
sheep from the best animals in the neighbourhood, and a guinea,
or even half a guinea, secured him his choice from the fold. The
breed from which they were chosen were the Leicestershire or
Warwickshire long wools. The “true old Warwickshire ram ”’ is
thus described by Marshall in 1789: ‘“‘ His frame large, and remark-
ably loose. His bone, throughout, heavy. His legs long and
thick, terminating in large splaw feet. His chine, as well as his
rump, as sharp asa hatchet. His skin might be said to rattle upon
his ribs . . . like a skeleton wrapped in parchment.” Even this
animal was handsomer than a ram of the “ true old Leicestershire
sort,’ which Marshall saw in 1784. ‘‘ A naturalist,’ he says,
‘““ would have found some difficulty in classing him; and, seeing
him on a mountain, might have deemed him a nondescript; a
something between a sheep and a goat.’’ Out of these unpromising
materials Bakewell succeeded in creating a new variety. His “new
Leicesters ’? became the most profitable sheep for arable farmers.
As by degrees the compactness of form, smallness of bone, fattening’
propensities, and early maturity were perpetuated, the breed was
established, and for a time swept all competitors before them.
While other breeds required three or four years to fit them for
market, the New Leicesters were prepared in two. Those who
tried the Dishley sheep found that they throve where others pined,
that while alive they were the hardiest, and when dead the heaviest.
In 1750 Bakewell let rams for the season at 16s. or 17s. 6d. apiece.
In 1789 he let none under 20 guineas, and received 3000 guineas
for the total of that season’s letting. The New Leicesters were
the first breed of sheep which were scientifically treated in England,
and though they were less adapted for the southern, eastern, and
northern counties, their supremacy on enclosed land in their own
Midland districts was undisputed.

Bakewell raised the New Leicesters to the highest perfection.
But this was not all. His breed in weight of fleece could not com-
pete with Lincolns, and was less suited to hills or mountains than
for enclosed arable land. He had, however, shown the way in
which other breeds might be improved ; imitation was easy. Ina
less immediate sense he was the creator, not only of the New
Leicesters, but of the improved Lincolns, South Downs and Cheviots.
Before these breeds, fitted for the most fertile grasslands and plains

LEICESTER SHEEP AND CATTLE 187

\
as well as suited to hills and mountains, native races died away,

like Red Indians before the civilised intruders. But gradually
supporters rallied round other varieties. Bakewell’s weapons were
turned against himself. Native sheep of other districts, improved
on his principles, began to hold their own, and, though on historical
grounds precedence will always be given to the New Leicesters and
the South Downs (improved by John Ellman of Glynde, 1753-1832),
it may be questioned whether they have not been rivalled and sur-
passed by other breeds in the qualities for which they were once
pre-eminent.

In cattle-breeding Bakewell was less. successful. It was his
material not his system which failed. He endeavoured to found
his typical race on the Lancashires or Craven Longhorns, which were
the favourite cattle in Leicestershire, and, in his opinion, the best
breed in England. He based his improvements on the labours of
two of his predecessors. Sir Thomas Gresley of Drakelow, near
Burton-on-Trent, began about 1720 the formation of a herd of
Longhorns. On this Drakelow blood Webster of Canley, near
Coventry, worked, and to his breed all the improved Longhorns
traced their descent. Bakewell founded his experiments on a
Westmoreland bull and two heifers from the Canley herd. To
them he applied the same principles which he followed in sheep-
breeding, and with great success. As graziers’ stock, the breed
was greatly improved. But as milkers, the new Longhorns were
deteriorated by their increased propensity to fatness. In a county
like Leicestershire, which depended not only on feeding stock but
on dairy produce,! this poverty of milking quality was a fatal objec-
tion. Even in his Longhorns Bakewell did not long retain the
lead. It soon passed away from him to Fowler of Rollright, in
Oxfordshire. But the breed itself was beaten by one which
possessed superior natural qualities. Almost throughout England
the Durham Shorthorns, founded on the Holderness and Tees-
water cattle, jumped into the first place, as the best rent-payers,
both as milkers and meat-producers. The Ketton herd of Charles
Colling became to cattle-breeders what Bakewell’s Dishley flock of

1 Mrs. Paulet of Wymondham, in the Melton district of Leicestershire, is
said to have been the first maker of Stilton cheeses. She supplied them to
Cooper Thornhill, who kept the Bell Inn at Stilton (Hunts) on the great
north road from London to Edinburgh, and they became famous among his
customers, and throughout England. The manufacture of Stilton cheeses
became an industry of the district. Mrs. Paulet was still living in 1780.

188 STOCKBREEDER’S ART AND ROBERT BAKEWELL

New Leicesters were to sheep-masters. It was as necessary for a
superior Shorthorn to claim descent from Colling’s bull “ Hubback ”
as for a race-horse to boast the blood of the Godolphin Arabian.
From ‘“‘ Hubback ”’ was descended the famous Durham ox, which
travelled through England in a specially constructed carriage from
1801 to 1810, exhibiting to the eyes of thousands of farmers a truer
standard of shape than any their ancestors had conceived, and con-
vincing them by personal interviews of the excellence of the improved
breed. The example was followed in many parts of the country.
Other breeds, notably the Herefords and North Devons, were
similarly improved. The formation of herds became a favourite
pursuit of wealthy landlords. Flora MacIvor herself might have
lived to see the day, when country gentlemen could become breeders
of cattle, without being ‘“‘ boorish two-legged steers like Killan-
cureit.””

Bakewell’s success and the rapidly increasing demand for butcher’s
meat raised up a host of imitators. Breeders everywhere followed
his example ; his standard of excellence was gradually recognised.
The foundation of the Smithfield Club in 1798 did much to promote
the improvement of live-stock. Some idea of the effect produced
may be gathered from the average weights of sheep and cattle sold
at Smithfield Market in 1710 and in 1795. In_1710 the average
weights for beeves was 370 Ibs., for calves 50 lbs., for sheep 28 Ibs.,
for lambs 18 Ibs. In 1795 beeves had risen in average weight to
800 Ibs., calves to 148 lbs., sheep to 80 lbs., lambs to 50 Ibs. This
enormous addition to the meat supply of the country, was due
partly to the efforts of agriculturists like Tull, Townshend, Bake-
well, and others, partly to the enclosure of open-fields and com-
mons which their improvements encouraged. On open-fields and
commons, owing mainly to the scarcity of winter keep, the live-
stock was dwarfed in size and weight. Even if the number of
animals which might be grazed on the commons was regulated by
custom, the stint was often so large that the pasture could only
carry the smallest animals. Where the grazing rights were
unlimited, as seems to have been not unusually the case in the
eighteenth century, the herbage was necessarily still more im-
poverished, and the size of the live-stock more stunted. On

1 Sir John Sinclair’s note for the use of the Select Parliamentary Committee
appointed in 1795 to consider “‘the Waste, Uninclosed and unproductive
Lands of the Kingdom.’”’ Appendix B, section 1, pp. 17, note. Sir John is
not, however, always a reliable witness.

MUTTON VERSUS WOOL 189
\

enclosed land, on the other hand, the introduction of turnip and
clover husbandry doubled the number and weight of the stock which
the land would carry, and the early maturity of the improved breeds
enabled farmers to fatten them more expeditiously. But one of
the consequences of this change in sheep-farming was not at first
foreseen. The wool was sacrificed to the mutton. A large sheep
paid better than a small. But as the size of the animal increased,
its fleece grew heavier, and the staple longer. The supply of fine
fleeces from the light, poorly-fed, short-wooled sheep of the com-
mons diminished so rapidly that, before the end of the century, a
new classification of sheep was introduced. Instead of being
divided into long wools and short wools, they were now classified
as long wools and middle wools. Improvements in machinery and
the introduction of new fabrics utilised the produce of the heavier
breeds of sheep ; but, for the better kinds of cloth, home manufac-
turers became increasingly dependent « on foreign | supplies of short
wool, ‘brought from Spain, Saxony, and New South Wales. A
change of fashion intensified the need of wool for a finer quality
of cloth than could be obtained in this country. The coarser
fabrics of manufacture from English material, which had contented
our ancestors, could not retain their hold on the home or foreign
markets. During the Napoleonic wars, the full effect of this change
in the raw material of woollen manufactures was concealed by the
suspension of continental rivalry. When peace was finally pro-
claimed, it was at once felt. A pitched battle began between the
manufacturer and the agriculturist ; the one demanded the free
import of foreign short wool, the other the free export of English
long wools, which made better prices abroad. Each resisted the
demand of the other. Home manufacturers opposed the free export
of British long-wools, because they feared the competition of
foreign cloth. British farmers opposed the free import of foreign
short wool, because they dreaded lest its introduction would force
down the price of their home produce. Finally, in 1826, Lord Liver-
pool’s government took off the duties both on the import and the
export of the raw material. To advocates of enclosures, the last
agricultural defence of the open-field farmer and commoner seemed
to be destroyed, when the removal of the import duty deprived the
fleeces of their half-starved sheep of all artificial advantages over
the finer and cheaper wools of foreign countries.

CHAPTER IX.

ARTHUR YOUNG AND THE DIFFUSION OF
KNOWLEDGE. 1760-1800.

The counties distinguished for the best farming : Hertfordshire, Essex, Suffolk,
Norfolk, Leicestershire: the low general standard; Arthur Young; his
crusade against bad farming, and the hindrances to progress; waste
land; the ‘“‘ Goths and Vandals” of open-field farmers: want of capital
and education ; insecurity of tenure ; prejudices and traditional practices ;
impassable roads ; rapid development of manufacture demands a change
of agricultural front: Young’s advocacy of capitalist landlords and large
tenant-farmers.

Durine the first three quarters of the eighteenth century many
advances had been made in the theory, and some in the practice, of
agriculture. Alternations of crops and the management of live-
stock were better understood. But progress was still confined to
localities, if not to individuals. Only in such counties as Hertford-
shire, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Leicestershire was a fair standard
of farming generally established. The superior enterprise of these
favoured districts was due to various causes, and was displayed in
different directions.

Without any special fertility of soil, Hertfordshire had for the
last hundred years enjoyed the reputation of being the best corn
county in England. To some extent it owed its superiority to the
neighbourhood of London. But Middlesex, which shared the same
advantage, was relatively backward. In Hertfordshire roads were
above the average. In Middlesex turnpike roads, in spite of a
large revenue from tolls, are described as “‘ very bad.” On the
main road from Tyburn to Uxbridge, in the winter of 1797-8, there
was but “ one passable track, and that was less than six feet wide,
and was eight inches deep in fluid mud. All the rest of the road
was from a foot to eighteen inches deep in adhesive mud.” Hert-
fordshire, which had been to a great extent covered with forest,

HERTFORDSHIRE FARMING 191
\

contained, at the close of the eighteenth century, few open-field
farms and an inconsiderable area of commons, which were practi-
cally confined to the chalk districts in the north of the county. In
Middlesex, on the other hand, 17,000 acres, or one-tenth of the
county, were commons, and, out of 23,000 arable acres, 20,000 were
cultivated in open-field farms. The neighbourhood of London
probably accounts for the predominance of pasture. Hertford-
shire had been, for many years, an enclosed county, divided into
small estates, and small farms conveniently varied in size. Unlike
Middlesex, it was almost entirely arable. Its farmers had at once
appreciated the value of turnips and clover, for which the soil was
well adapted. Both crops must have been adopted within a few
years after their first introduction into the country, if there is any
truth in the tradition that Oliver Cromwell paid £100 a year to a
Hertfordshire farmer named Howe for their successful cultivation.
Other useful practices were established at an early date. William
Ellis of Gaddesden? (died 1758), a Hertfordshire farmer whose
writings enjoyed a short-lived popularity, attributed the reputa-
tion of ‘“‘ this our celebrated county ”’ to four principal means of
improvement: ‘good ploughings, mixing earths, dunging and
dressing, resting the ground with sown grasses.’”’ The Hertford-
shire men were clean farmers. Their ploughmen were so celebrated
that the county was “ accounted a Nursery for skill in that Pro-
fession.”” Chalk was largely used on heavy clays, and red clay on
sandy or gravelly soils. Nor were the advantages gained by neigh-
bourhood to a great city neglected. London refuse was liberally
bought and freely employed. Large quantities “of soot, coney-
clippings, Horn-shavings, Rags, Hoofs-hair, ashes’ were purchased
from “ Mr. Atkins in Turnmill-Street near Clerkenwell.” To these
were added, when Walker ® wrote his report on the county, bones—
boiled or burned—sheep-trotters, and malt-dust. Great numbers
of sheep were also folded, mostly bought at Tring Fair from West-
country drovers. But the peculiar practice of Hertfordshire
farmers, in which Ellis took the greatest pride, was the sowing of
tares on the turnip fallows as green fodder for horses in May.

1 General View of the Agriculture of Hertfordshire, by Arthur Young (1804),
55.

5

p.
2 E.g. Chiltern and Vale Farming explained (1733); The Modern Husband-
man, 8 vols. (1750).
3 General View of the Agriculture of the County of Hertford, by D. Walker
(1795).

192 THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE

Young (1770) states that, while in other counties the land lay idle,
these crops fed five horses to the acre for a month, at 2s. 6d. each a
week. It was on these crops that Hertfordshire farmers reared the
horses which they bought as two-year-olds in Leicestershire. Yet
at the beginning of the nineteenth century the example had been
rarely followed in other counties.

Suffolk and Essex also afforded good examples of the best. English
farming as it was practised at the close of the-eighteenth century.
Both counties had, as a whole, been enclosed for many years. Only
on the poor and chalky soil of the north-western district had open-
fields held their own. As early as 1618,1 East Suffolk and Mid
Suffolk were enclosed, and only “ the westerne parts ether wholly
champion or neer.” In both counties yeomanry abounded, and
in Essex the class was in 1807 still increasing. “For twenty
or thirty years past scarcely an estate is sold, if divided into
lots of forty or fifty to two or three hundred a year but is purchased
by farmers.” ? Both counties were centres of manufacturing
industries, and in addition enjoyed the advantage of access to a
great market. Suffolk supplied London with butter, Essex with
calves, for which it had been famous in the seventeenth century.
In both counties large quantities of manure were now used on the
land. Farmers were not always so energetic. Under a lease of
1753 a tenant of the Suffolk manor of Hawsted was allowed two
shillings for every load of manure which he brought from Bury and
laid on the land. In a tenancy of twenty-one years only one load
was charged to the landlord. Sixty years later, agriculturists had
become more energetic. On the light sands of East Suffolk, marl
and a calcareous shelly mixture of phosphates called “‘ crag ’’ were
freely employed as fertilisers. Chalk from the Kentish quarries
for use on the clays, as well as London refuse, were purchased by
Essex farmers, conveyed by sea up the estuaries, and thence dis-
tributed in the county. Probably this traffic partly explains the
condition of the Essex roads, which were as bad as the Suffolk
highways were good. In both counties hollow drainage was
practised earlier than elsewhere. The drains were wedge-shaped,
filled with branches, twisted straw, or stone, and covered in with
earth. Bradley? speaks of the ‘“‘ Essex practice ” of making drains

1 Breviary of Suffolk, by Robert Reyce, 1618, edited by Lord F, Hervey, 1902.
2 North-East Essex, by Arthur Young (1807), vol. i. p. 40.
3 Complete Body of Husbandry (1727), p. 133-4.

ESSEX AND SUFFOLK 193
a

two feet deep, at close and regular intervals throughout a whole
field, filled with rubble or bushes, and he derives the term ‘“‘ thorough-
drainage ” from an Essex word “ thorow,’? meaning a trench to
carry off the water. Ploughing was in both counties economically
conducted. The Suffolk swing-plough, drawn by two horses, was
the common implement. Oxen were seldom used: “no groaning
ox is doomed to labour there” is the evidence of Bloomfield.
Turnips and clover were firmly established as arable crops. Suffolk
had been for two centuries famous for its field cultivation of carrots.
Cabbages were a later introduction, but extensively grown. Hemp
was cultivated in the neighbourhood of Beccles, and hops flourished
round Saxmundham. In Essex a peculiar crop, grown, generally
together, on the same land for three years in succession, consisted
of caraway, coriander, and teazels. The teazels were bought by
woollen manufacturers, and fixed in a revolving cylinder to catch
the surface of bays, says, etc., and so raise the nap of cloth to the
required length. Suffolk was also famous for its live-stock. The
Suffolk Punch was a short compact horse of about fifteen hands
high, properly of a sorrel colour, unrivalled in its power of draught,
though, as Cullum wrote in 1790, “ not made to indulge the rapid
impatience of this posting generation.” In the dairy the “ milch
kine ”’ of Suffolk are said by Reyce (1618) to be as good as in any
other county, and he notes the beauty of their horns. In later
times the Suffolk Dun was renowned for the quantity of her milk.
Suffolk cheese, however, had an evil reputation. It was “so hard
that pigs grunt at it, dogs bark at it, but none dare bite it.”” The
mystery of its interior inspired Bloomfield to sing of the substance,
which
‘* Mocks the weak effort of the bending blade,

Or in the hog-trough rests in perfect spite,
Too big to swallow and too hard to bite.”

As the eighteenth century drew to a close, it was to Norfolk and
to Leicestershire that men had begun to look for the best examples
of arable and pasture farming. In both counties progress had been
largely due to the character of the farmers, and in Norfolk to the
alertness and industry of the labourers. In Norfolk, Marshall
(1787) says that farmers were “‘ strongly marked by a liberality of
thinking,” that they were men who had “‘ mixed with what is called
the World, of which their leases render them independent .. .

occupying the same position in society as the clergy and smaller
N

194 THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE

squires.” Many of them had prospered enough to buy their
holdings, and to add to them “numerous small estates of the
yeomanry.” Nor is this surprising in view of the productiveness
of their land under the Norfolk system of husbandry. At the end
of the eighteenth century the average annual number of live-stock
sent from the county to Smithfield was 20,000 cattle and 30,000
sheep. It was also stated in 1795, that as much corn was exported
from the four Norfolk ports of Yarmouth, Lynn, Wells, and Blake-
ney, aS was sent abroad from the whole of the rest of England. In
Leicestershire, again, ““ yeomanry of the higher class’ abounded.
‘Men cultivating their own estates of two, three, four or five
hundreds a year are thickly scattered over almost every part of
the country’; they had “ travelled much and mixed constantly
with one another.’’ In both Leicestershire and Norfolk the special
branches of farming which were generally followed brought agri-
culturists into contact with their rivals, compelled them to be
wide-awake, and sharpened their intelligence. Both were occupied
in fattening stock for town markets, the Leicestershire men on
pasture breeding their own stock, the Norfolk farmers on arable
land buying their cattle from Scottish drovers. In one important
respect there was a wide difference in their development. In Nor-
folk, great landowners, like Lord Townshend and, later, Coke of
Norfolk, took the lead in improvement, tested for the benefit of
their tenants the value of the new arable methods, encouraged them
by long leases to follow their example, and by high rents made
imitation compulsory. In Leicestershire, on the other hand, large
landlords were few and had given no lead ; the example was set by
large tenant-farmers or substantial yeomen.

Other counties had adopted other useful practices which had
scarcely spread beyond their borders. Thus Lancashire excelled
in the cultivation of potatoes; Middlesex was celebrated for the
art and practice of haymaking ; Wiltshire for the irrigation and
treatment of water-meadows; Cheshire for its management of
dairy produce; Yorkshire farmers round Sheffield had tested the
value of bone-dust, many years before the value of the manure
was known in other districts. But there is some evidence that
other counties had rather fallen back than advanced. This is
especially true of Cambridgeshire, which enjoyed the reputation of
being the worst cultivated county in England. It will probably be
true to say that the country as a whole had made no general advance

ARTHUR YOUNG 195

S

on the agriculture of the thirteenth century. The stagnation was
mainly due to the prevalence of wastes, the system of open-field
farming, the risk of loss of capital in improvements made under
tenancies-at-will, the poverty and ignorance of hand-to-mouth
farmers, the obstinacy of traditionary practices, the want of mar-
kets, and difficulties of communication. Till these obstacles were
to some extent overcome, agricultural progress could not become
general. It is with the removal of these hindrances that the name
of Arthur Young is inseparably connected.

Born in London in 1741, Arthur Young was the younger son of
the Rev. Arthur Young, who owned a small estate of 200 acres at
Bradfield in Suffolk. From his father he inherited his literary
tastes, a habit of negligence in money matters, and ultimately a
landed property. Out of Lavenham School he passed, at the age
of seventeen, into a wine merchant’s office at Lynn. A youthful
fop and gallant, he there began his literary career in order to pay
for books and clothes. Before he was nineteen, he had published
four novels and two political pamphlets. On his father’s death in
1759, he abandoned trade for literature, and Lynn for London,
where he launched a monthly magazine called The Universal
Museum, which only ran for six months. The venture was unpro-
fitable. Without profession or employment, he drifted back, in
1763, to his mother’s home at Bradfield, married, and settled down
to farming as a business. As a practical farmer he failed, and the
impression left by his writings is that he always would have done
so. On three farms, which he took in rapid succession, he lost
money. Meanwhile he was succeeding better as a writer. Books
and pamphlets flowed from his pen with prodigious rapidity, and
his income was considerable. In 1767 he began those farming
tours, in the course of which he drew his graphic sketches of rural »
England, Ireland, and France.!_ His careless ease of style, his racy
forcible English, his gift of happy phrases, his quick observation,
his wealth of miscellaneous detail, make him the first of English
agricultural writers. Apart from the value of the facts which they

14 Sia Weeks’ Tour through the Southern Counties of England and Wales
(1768); A Six Months’ Tour through the North of England (1770), 4 vols. ;
The Farmers Tour through the East of England (1771), 4 vols.; Tour in
Ireland, 1776-7-8 (1780), 2 vols. ; Travels during the Years 1787, ’88, °89 and
1790, undertaken more Particularly with a view of ascertaining the Cultivation,
Wealth, Resources, and National Prosperity of the Kingdom of France (1792-4),
2 vols.

196 THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE

contain, his tours, with their fresh word-pictures, their gossip, their
personal incidents, and even their irrelevancies, have the charm
of private diaries. His Jreland was described by Maria Edgeworth
as “‘ the first faithful portrait of the inhabitants,” and his France
was recognised by Tocqueville as a first-hand authority on the rural
conditions of the country on the eve of the Revolution. In 1784
he began his Annals of Agriculture, a monthly publication to which
George ITI., under the name of his shepherd at Windsor, “ Ralph
Robinson,” occasionally contributed. The magazine was con-
tinued till 1809, when, owing to failing eyesight, Young discon-
tinued its publication. He had written more than a quarter of
the forty-six volumes himself.

Young had now succeeded, on the death of his mother in 1785,
to the Bradfield estate, his elder brother having broken his neck
in the hunting-field. His Travels in France show that he sym-
pathised with the peasants in their early efforts to free themselves
from the ancien régime. But the subsequent course of the Revolu-
tion filled him with horror. In 1793, he wrote an effective
pamphlet on The Example of France a Warning to Great Britain,
urged the formation of a “ militia of property,’’ and himself joined
the Suffolk yeomanry. In the same year Pitt established the Board
of Agriculture, with Sir John Sinclair as President. Arthur Young
was appointed Secretary with a salary of £400 a year and, later,
an official residence in Sackville Street, London. One of the first
objects of the Board was to collect information respecting the
agricultural conditions of each county. For this purpose Com-
missioners were appointed. They were not always wisely selected ;
but for this choice, against which Young protested, the President
was responsible. Their Reports were severely criticised by William
Marshall! (1745-1818), an embittered, disappointed man, who had

1 Marshall’s General Survey . . . of the Rural Economy of England has been
frequently quoted. His valuable records fill twelve volumes published
between 1787 and 1798, two volumes being allotted to each of the six depart-
ments into which he divides the country: (1) the Eastern: Norfolk, 2 vols.
(1787); (2) the Northern: Yorkshire, 2 vols. (1788); (3) the West Central :
Gloucestershire, North Wilts, and Herefordshire, 2 vols. (1789); (4) the Mid-
land: Leicestershire, etc., 2 vols. (1790); (5) the Western: Devonshire and
parts of Somersetshire, Dorsetshire, and Cornwall, 2 vols. (1796); (6) the
Southern: Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire, 2 vols. (1798). Of the first
ten volumes a second edition was published in 1796. A second edition of the
Southern volumes was published in 1799, with the prefix of a sketch of the
Vale of London.

Marshall has none of the charm of Young. He is a heavy, didactic writer.

THE INSPIRATION OF THE MOVEMENT 197

himself originally suggested the establishment of the Board and
the compilation of the surveys. But, with all their faults, the
reporters collected a mass of valuable information on the state of
farming from 1793 to 1813. Six of the surveys were by Young
himself,! and his Report on Oxfordshire was almost his last literary
work.

Young was a man of strong prejudices. He was also wanting in
power of generalisation. But he worked untiringly for what he
believed to be the progress of good farming. On this object were
concentrated the chief labours of his life—his enquiries, experi-
ments, researches, his collections of statistics, his notes of useful
practices, his observations on new methods. His eager face, with
its keen eyes and aquiline features, expressed the vivacity of his
temperament, just as his tall slender figure indicated the restless
activity of his body. A gay and charming companion, his enthusi-
asms were infectious. He was the soul and inspiration of the
progressive movement. ‘To him, more than to any other individual,
were due the dissemination of new ideas on farming, the diffusion
of the latest results of observation and experiment, the creation
of new agencies for the interchange of experiences, the establish-
ment of farmers’ clubs, ploughing matches, and agricultural societies
and shows. His married life was not happy ; but his wife was not
entirely to blame. An affectionate father, his whole heart was
given to his youngest daughter (Martha Ann, born 1783, died 1797)
nicknamed “Bobbin.” Versailles did not afford him so much
pleasure as giving to the child a French doll. Her death broke
down his health and spirits. Grief deepened into religious melan-
choly. His gloom was intensified by failing eyesight. In 1811 he
became totally blind. Nine years later (1820), he died in London.

When Young began to write on agriculture, vast districts, which
might have been profitably cultivated, still lay waste. Of the
area already under tillage, a large proportion lay in open-fields.

But his system is better; his generalisations are more conclusive, and less
contradictory ; his facts are better arranged ; he was, also, a better farmer. A
zealous collector of ‘‘ provincialisms ” of speech, he gives lists of the local
words which he found in use in the Northern, Midland, and West Central
departments, and appends them, with a glossary, to the volumes to which they
relate. Besides the Rural Economy, he published numerous other works,
chiefly on agriculture.

1 Young wrote the General View of the Agriculture of the County of Suffolk
(1797), County of Lincoln (1799), of Hertfordshire (1804), of Norfolk (1804),
of Essex, 2 vols. (1807); of Oxfordshire (1809).

198 THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE

Under this system, whatever might be the differences or capacities
of the soil, the whole of the land, with rare exceptions, was placed
under the same unvarying rotation. It was this inability to put
land to its best use which especially roused Young’s indignation.
When he made his Eastern Tour in 1770, he found nearly all the
Vale of Aylesbury cultivated in arable open-fields, lying in broad,
high, crooked ridges. The course of cropping was (1) Fallow,
(2) Wheat or Barley, (3) Beans. The land was ploughed from two
to four inches deep, and five horses were used to each plough.
Beans were sown broadcast, and never hoed. Drainage was badly
needed, for the ridge system had failed. But the lands were so
intermixed that any other system was difficult, if not impossible.
Even in June, only the tops of the ridges were dry, and, in the
winter, most of the land, crops and all, were soaked with water.
As a result, the products were as bad as the land was good. The
Vale of Aylesbury farmers, whom Ellis (1733) describes as ‘‘ one
of the most obstinate bigotted sort,’ “reap bushels where they
should reap quarters.”” Both in Buckinghamshire and in Northamp-
tonshire, the cow-dung was collected from the fields, mixed with
short straw, kneaded into lumps, daubed on the walls of buildings,
and, when dry, used as fuel. ‘‘ There cannot,” says Young, “ be
such an application of manure anywhere but among the Hotten-
tots.”’1 Naseby Field in 1770 consisted of 6000 acres, all cultivated
on the open-field system, on the same course of cropping which
Young found established on village farms from the Vale of Ayles-
bury to the north of Derbyshire. Round the mud-built village lay
a few pasture enclosures. The three arable fields were crossed and
re-crossed by paths to the different holdings, filled with a cavernous
depth of mire; the pastures were in a state of nature, overrun
with nettles, furze, and rushes. The farm-houses and buildings,
all collected in the village, were two miles distant from a great part
of the fields. When Young visited the village again in 1785, he
found that the land in tillage for spring corn was “ perfectly matted
with couch.”’ Marshall, a less prejudiced observer than Young,
visited the Vale of Gloucester in 1789. There he found half the
arable land unenclosed. Near Gloucester, and in other parts of
the district, there were extensive tracts of land, called “‘ Every

1It was no uncommon practice. Edward Laurence suggests (1727) that
*‘Cow-dung not to be burnt for fuel’? should be inserted as a restrictive
covenant in all leases. He mentions Yorkshire and Lincolnshire as counties
where dung was frequently used as fuel.

THE GOTHS AND VANDALS 199
\

Year’s Land,” which were cropped year after year without any
fallows. Only the cleanest farming could have made such a system
productive. But here Marshall found beans hidden among mustard
growing wild as a weed ; peas choked by poppies and corn mari-
golds; every stem of barley fettered with convolvulus; wheat
pining in thickets of couch and thistle. It is not surprising that
the yield of wheat was anything from 18 bushels an acre down to
12 or 8 bushels.

Other instances might be quoted to show the general condition
of open-field farms. But the system had its champions, even
among practical agriculturists, especially if they were flock-masters.
It cannot, therefore, always have been characterised by the worst
farming. No doubt lower depths might be reached. If severalty
made a good farmer better, it also made a bad farmer worse. Nor
was the system altogether incapable of improvement. Here and
there Young or Marshall alludes to some useful practice adopted
on village farms. For instance, Young speaks of the drainage of
common pastures by very large ploughs belonging to the parish,
cutting 16 inches in depth and the same in width, drawn by 12
horses ; of the introduction of clover by common consent into the
rotation of crops, or of the adoption of a fourth course instead of
the old two- or three-shift system. So also Marshall notes the
open-field practice of dibbing and hoeing beans in Gloucestershire,
where beans commanded a ready market among the Guinea traders
of Bristol as food for negro slaves on the voyage from the African
coast to the West Indies. But, speaking generally, any rotation
of crops in which roots formed an element was with difficulty
introduced on arable land which was pastured in common during
the autumn and winter months; drainage was impracticable on
the intermixed lands of village farms ; among the:underfed, under-
sized, and underbred flocks and herds of the commons the principles
of Bakewell could not be followed. That open-field farmers were
impervious to new methods is certain. ‘‘ You might,” says Young,
‘as well recommend to them an Orrery as a hand-hoe.”’ That they
had not the capital to carry out costly improvements is also obvious.
They could not bring into cultivation the sands of Norfolk, the
wolds of Lincolnshire, or the ling-covered Peak of Derbyshire.
From a purely agricultural point of view Young’s intemperate
crusade against village farms was justified, and he had reason on
his side when he said that ‘“‘ the Goths and Vandals of open-field

200 THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE

farmers must die out before any complete change takes place.”
To some extent the same arguments applied to small farmers
occupying their holdings in severalty. “‘ Poverty and ignorance,”
says Marshall, speaking of the Vale of Pickering in 1787, “‘ are the
ordinary inhabitants of small farms; even the smaller estates of
the yeomanry are notorious for bad management.” It was on the
larger farms that he found the spirit of improvement and the best
practice. In Gloucestershire (1789) he looked to the ‘“‘ few men
of superior intelligence’ to raise the standard of the profession.
Nor did enclosures necessarily mean an improvement of methods.
In Derbyshire, at the time of Young’s tour in 1770, many farmers
on new enclosures pursued the same course of cropping to which
they had been restricted by the “ field constraint ” of village farms.
Sometimes the landlord, and not the tenant, was the Vandal or the
Goth. Thus in Cambridgeshire farmers on freshly enclosed land
were bound by their leases to continue the old course of fallow,
corn, and beans.

Even when a tenant-farmer possessed both enterprise and capital,
the method of land-tenure discouraged improvement. Without
some security for his outlay, no tenant could venture to spend
money on his land. At the same time he was often expected to
make improvements which now are considered the duty of a land-
lord and parts of the necessaryequipment of a farm. Yet the
commonest forms of tenure were lettings from year to year, voidable
on either side, as they then were, at six months’ notice. In the
eastern counties leases for terms of years, with covenants for
management, were in the last half of the century becoming a usual
form of lettmg. But elsewhere long leases were regarded with
justifiable suspicion by both parties. Tenants objected to them,
because they bound them to take land for a long period before they
knew what the land would do, and to make fixed annual payments
based on current prices which might not be maintained. Land-
lords also objected to them, because they deprived owners of the
advantages of a rise in prices, and “ told the farmer when he might
begin systematically to exhaust the land.’”’ Where a good under-
standing existed between landlords and tenants, leases were not
indispensable. Land was often farmed on_ verbal agreements.
Ordinary tenancies-at-will secured Berkshire and Nottinghamshire
farmers in their holdings from generation to generation. Under the
same tenancy, on the Duke of Devonshire’s estates in Derbyshire,

INSECURITY OF LAND-TENURE 201
a

tenants even carried out costly and permanent improvements.
Often, however, the uncertainty of this form of tenure checked
enterprise ; because of it, also, tenants fell into the routine of the
district and plodded along in the beaten track trodden by their
ancestors. Sometimes the uncertainty was a real insecurity.
Thus, in Yorkshire, in 1787, Marshall notices that confidence
between landlord and tenant had been destroyed by successive
rises in rents. ‘‘ Good farming ceased, for fear the fields should
look green and the rent be raised.’ Local rhymes expressed the
popular belief that he ‘‘ that havocs may sit,” while the improving
tenant must either pay increased rent or “ flit.’ Leases for lives
were common, especially in the south-western counties. They
gave a fixity of tenure; but they were necessarily, both for tenant
and landlord, somewhat of a gambling speculation. Fourteen
years’ purchase of the rental value was the usual price for a lease
of three lives. The initial outlay crippled the first tenant, and,
only if the lives proved good, was the purchase remunerative. On
the other hand, the landlord was often obliged, as the third life
drew towards its close, to put himself in as sub-tenant to save his
land from exhaustion and his buildings from ruin. Leases for very
short terms were not infrequent. On open-field farms in Bedford-
shire and Huntingdon the term was three years, in Durham six
years, corresponding to the completion of one or two courses of the
ordinary three-shift routine. But in the last twenty years of the
eighteenth century, leases for 7, 14, and 21 years became more
common. Even longer terms were often granted, as the enthusi-
asm for improvement extended. Tenants under long leases throve
on rents fixed before the high prices during the Napoleonic war ;
but after 1813 the position was disastrously reversed. Prudent
men had taken their money out. The sufferers were new men,
who had enjoyed none of the advantages of the system ; they were
its victims, never its beneficiaries. Two of the difficulties by which
the tenure is embarrassed were already becoming important, if not
burning, questions—the compensation for unexhausted improve-
. ments, and the covenants imposed by landlords. Some of the
restrictions imposed by leases were a bar to progress. Leicester-
shire graziers, for example, were crippled by the absolute prohibi-
tion of arable farming; they were forced either to sell off their
stock at Michaelmas when it was cheapest, or to buy winter-keep
from Hertfordshire. On the other hand, covenants of a reasonable

202 THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE

nature proved invaluable in lifting the standard of a stationary
agriculture, and raising farming to a higher level.

Other formidable obstacles to progress lay in the mass of local
prejudices and the obstinate adherence to antiquated methods.
All over the country there were men like the ‘“ round-frocked ”
farmers of Surrey, who prided themselves on preserving the prac-
tices and dress of their forefathers, men of “ inflexible honesty,”
enemies equally to “‘improvements in agriculture” and to the
commercial morality of a new generation. Reforming agriculturists
no doubt were too ready to ignore the solid basis of sound sense
and experience which often underlay practices that in theory were
objectionable. In their excuse it may be urged that their patience
was sorely tried. Traditional methods were treasured with jealous
care as agricultural heirlooms ; even ocular proof of the superiority
of other systems failed to wean farmers from the routine of their
ancestors. In 1768 turnips and clover were still unknown in many
parts of the country; and their full use only appreciated in the
eastern counties. In some districts, as in Essex (1808), clover had
been adopted with such zeal that the land was already turning
sick; in others it was scarcely tried. In Westmoreland, for
instance, in 1794, ‘“‘ the prejudice that exists almost universally
against clover and rye-grass ”’ was said to be “a great obstacle to
the improvement of the husbandry of the county.” In Cumber-
land, where clover had been introduced in 1752, it was still rare in
1797. Turnips remained, at the close of the eighteenth century,
an ‘‘ alien crop” in many counties, such as Wiltshire, Dorsetshire,
Hampshire, Staffordshire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Glamorgan-
shire, and Worcestershire. Even where they were grown, they
were generally sown broadcast, and seldom hoed. In 1780 a
Norfolk farmer settled in Devonshire, where he drilled and hoed his
roots. His crops were far superior to those of other farmers in the
district ; yet, at the close of the century, no neighbour had followed
his example. In 1794 many Northumberland sheep-masters still
milked their ewes, though the more intelligent had discontinued
the practice. Another illustration of the tyranny of custom may .
be taken from ploughing. In many districts the Norfolk, Rother-
ham, or Small’s ploughs had been introduced at a great economy
of cost. But elsewhere farmers still clung to some ancestral imple-
ment. In Kent, at the time of Cromwell, it was not unusual to see
six, eight, or twelve oxen attached to a single plough. On the

AGRICULTURAL HEIRLOOMS 203
™~

dry land of East Kent, on stony land, on rough hill-sides, the
implement undoubtedly had, and has, its uses. But on all soils
alike, a century and a half later, the same huge machine, looking
at a distance more like a cart than a plough, with a beam the size
of a gate-post, remained the idol of the men of Kent. In Middlesex,
in 1796, it was no uncommon sight to see ploughs drawn by six
horses, with three men in attendance. In Berkshire (1794), four
horses and two men ploughed one acre a day. In Northampton-
shire Donaldson (1794) found in general use a clumsy implement,
with a long massive beam, drawn by four to six horses at length,
with a boy to lead and a man to hold. By immemorial custom in
Gloucestershire two men, a boy, and a team of six horses were
usually employed in ploughing. Coke of Norfolk sent into the
county a Norfolk plough, and ploughman, who, with a pair of horses,
did the same work in the same time. But though the annual cost
of the operation was thus diminished by a half, it was twenty
years before the neighbours profited by the lesson.

The backwardness of many agricultural counties was to some
extent due to difficulties of communication. By the creation of
Turnpike Trusts (1663 and onwards) portions of the great high-
ways were placed in repair. Yet in the eighteen miles of turnpike
road between Preston and Wigan, Young in 1770 measured ruts
“ four feet deep and floating with mud only from a wet summer,”
and passed three broken-down carts. ‘‘I know not in the whole
range of language,’ he says, “terms sufficiently expressive to
describe this infernal road. Let me most seriously caution all
travellers who may accidentally propose to travel this terrible
country to avoid it as they would the devil, for a thousand to one
they break their necks or their limbs, by overthrows or breakings
down.” The turnpike road to Newcastle from the south seems to
have been equally dangerous. ‘‘ A more dreadful road,”’ he says,
“cannot be imagined. I was obliged to hire two men at one place
to support my chaise from overturning. Let me persuade all
travellers to avoid this terrible country, which must either dislocate
their bones with broken pavements, or bury them in muddy sand.”
The turnpike road from Chepstow to Newport was a rocky lane,
“full of hugeous stones, as big as one’s horse, and abominable
holes.’ Marshall says that the Leicestershire roads, till about
1770, had been “in a state of almost total neglect since the days

1 For further details as to roads, see chap. xiii.

204 THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE

of the Mercians.”” The principal road from Tamworth to Ashby
lay, in 1789, “‘in a state almost impassable several months in the
year.” Waggons were taken off their wheels and dragged on their
bellies. Essex, in the time of Fitzherbert, was famous for the
badness of its roads. In the eighteenth century it worthily main-
tained its reputation. “*‘ A mouse could barely pass a carriage in
its narrow lanes,” which were filled with bottomless ruts, and often
choked by a string of chalk waggons, buried so deeply in the mire
that they could only be extricated by thirty or forty horses. “ Of
all the cursed roads that ever disgraced this kingdom in the very
age of barbarism none ever equalled that from Billericay to the
‘ King’s Head ’ at Tilbury ” was the suffering cry of Young in 1769.
The roads of Herefordshire, says Marshall, twenty years later, were
“such as you might expect to find in the marshes of Holland or the
mountains of Switzerland.’’ In Devonshire, which Marshall con-
sidered to be agriculturally the most benighted district of England,
there was not in 1750 one single wheeled carriage ; everything was
carried in sledges or on pack-horses. The latter were still in uni-
versal use in 1796. Crops were piled between willow “ crooks,”
to which the load was bound ; manure was carried in strong panniers,
or ‘‘ potts,’’ the bottom of which was a sort of falling door; sand
was slung in bags across the wooden pack-saddle. Even where
efforts were made to improve the highways, the attempt was often
rendered useless by ignorance of the science of road-making. Some
roads were convex and barrel-shaped. But the fall from the centre
of the road to the sides was so rapid that carts could only travel in
the centre with safety. Many roads were concave, constructed in
the form of a trough, filled in with sand. In wet weather this
deposit became porridge. On a road of this formation between
Woodstock and Oxford, Marshall, in 1789, encountered labourers
employed in “ scooping out the batter.”” Yet in spite of the diffi-
culty of communication, distant counties carried on a considerable
trade in agricultural produce. Thus calves, bred in Northampton-
shire, were sent to Kssex to be reared. The animals travelled in
carts with their legs tied together, were eight days on the road,
and during the journey were fed with “ gin-balls,” 7.e. flour and gin
mixed together. Off the main lines of communication, highways
were unmetalled tracks, which spread in width as vehicles deviated
to avoid the ruts of their predecessors. By-roads were often zig-
zag lanes, engineered on the principle that one good or bad turn

NEEDS OF A MANUFACTURING POPULATION 205
~~

deserved another. In narrow ways the bells on the teams were not
merely ornaments ; they were warnings that the passage was barred
by the entry of another vehicle. When rural districts were thus
cut off from one another, their isolation was not only a formidable
obstacle to agricultural progress, but made a uniform system of
growing corn on every kind of land a practical necessity. Yet
the days when Gloucester seemed “in the Orcades,” and York a
“ Pindarick flight ”’ from London had their advantages. In 1800
it required fifty-four hours, and favourable circumstances, for “ a
philosopher, six shirts, his genius, and his hat upon it,” to reach
London from Dublin.

Shut off from neighbours by impassable roads, impeded in their
access to markets, not ambitious of raising from the soil anything
beyond their own needs and the satisfaction of the-local demand for
bread, farmers felt no spur to improvement. Hitherto the slow
increase of a rural population was the only effective incentive to
increased production. But as the eighteenth century drew to its
close, Watt, Hargreaves, Crompton, Arkwright, and other me-
chanical geniuses were beginning to change the face of society with
the swiftness of a revolution. Population was shifting from the
South to the North, and advancing by leaps and bounds in
crowded manufacturing towns. Huge markets were springing up
for agricultural produce. Hitherto there had been few divisions of
employment because only the simplest.implements of production
were used; spinners, weavers, and cloth-workers, iron-workers,
handicraftsmen, had combined much of their special industries with
the tillage of the soil. But the rapid development of manufacture
caused its complete separation from agriculture, and the application
of machinery to manual industries completed the revolution in social
arrangements. A division of labour became an economic necessity.
Farmers and manufacturers grew mutually dependent. Self-
sufficing farming was thrown out of date. Like manufacture, agri-
culture was ceasing to be a domestic industry. Both had to be
organised on a commercial footing. The problem was, how could
the inevitable changes be met best and most promptly? How
could a country at war with Europe raise the most home-grown food
for a rapidly growing population, concentrated in the coal and
iron fields ? How could agriculture supply the demand for artisan
labour, and yet increase its own productiveness ? Arthur Young
was, at this period of his career, ready with an unhesitating answer

206 THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE

—large farms, large capital, long leases, and the most improved
methods of cultivation and stock-breeding. His object was to
develop to the utmost the resources of the soil. To this end all
social considerations must be subordinated. Every obstacle to good
farming must be swept away—wastes reclaimed, commons divided,
open-fields converted into individual occupations, antiquated
methods abandoned, obsolete implements scrapped, improved
practices uniformly adopted. ‘‘ Where,” he asks, with perfect
truth, ‘‘is the little farmer to be found who will cover his whole
farm with marl at the rate of 100 or 150 tons per acre ? who will
drain all his land at the expense of £2 or £3 an acre ? who will pay
a heavy price for the manure of towns, and convey it thirty miles
by land carriage ? who will float his meadows at the expense of
£5 an acre ? who, to improve the breed of his sheep, will give 1000
guineas for the use of a single ram for a single season ? who will
send across the Kingdom to distant provinces for new implements,
and for men to use them ? who will employ and pay men for residing
in provinces where practices are found which they want to intro-
duce into their farms ? ”

Young’s spirited crusade against bad or poor farming would
probably have fallen on deaf ears, if it had not been supported by
the prospect of financial gain and by the impulse of industrial
necessities. As he put the case, more produce from the land
meant higher rents for the landlord, larger incomes for farmers,
better wages for labourers, more home-grown food for the nation.
Under the pressure of war-prices and of the gigantic growth of a
manufacturing population, the system which he advocated made
rapid progress. Years after his death, it was established with such
completeness that men forgot not only the existence of any different
conditions, but even the very name of the most active pioneer of
the change. In the agricultural literature of the early and middle
Victorian era, he is almost ignored. The article on English agri-
culture in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, for example, devotes only
a few lines to his career. Recently his memory has been revived.
in England by the renewal under different circumstances of the
struggle between large and small farmers. In France, on the other
hand, where the contest between capitalist farmers and peasant pro-
prietors was never decisively terminated, the discussion has always
centred round his name. In the words of Lesage, his latest editor
and translator, France has made an adopted child of Arthur Young.

“FARMER GEORGE ” 207

CHAPTER X.

LARGE FARMS AND CAPITALIST FARMERS.
1780-1813.

Agricultural enthusiasm at the close of the eighteenth century ; high prices
of agricultural produce; the causes of the advance; increased demand
and cessation of foreign supplies ; the state of the currency ; rapid advance
of agriculture on the new lines of capitalist farming; impulse given to
enclosing movement and the introduction of improved practices ; Davy’s
Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry; the work of large landlords: Coke
of Norfolk.

THE enthusiasm for farming progress, which Arthur Young zeal-
ously promoted, spread with rapidity. A fashion was created
which was more lasting, because less artificial and more practical,
than it had been in the days of Pope. Great landlords took the
lead in agricultural improvements. Their farming zeal did not
escape criticism. Dr. Edwards! in 1783 expressed a feeling which
was prevalent two centuries before: “Gentlemen have no right
to be farmers ; and their entering upon agriculture to follow it as
a business is perhaps a breach of their moral duty.” But it was
now that young men, heirs to landed estates as well as younger
sons, began to go as pupils to farmers. George III. rejoiced in
the title of ‘“‘ Farmer George,”’ considered himself more indebted to
Arthur Young than to any man in his dominions, carried the last
volume of the Annals with him in his travelling carriage, kept his
model farm at Windsor, formed his flock of merino sheep, and
experimented in stock-breeding. The Duke of Bedford at Woburn,
Lord Rockingham at Wentworth, Lord Egremont at Petworth,
Coke at Holkham, and numerous other landlords, headed the

1 Plan of an Undertaking for the Improvement of Husbandry ete., by Dr.
Edwards of Barnard Castle (1783).

*The King’s Windsor Farm is described by Nathaniel Kent in Hunter’s
Georgical Essays (1803), vol. iv. Essay vii.

208 LARGE FARMS AND CAPITALIST FARMERS

reforming movement. Fox, even in the Louvre, was lost in con-
sideration whether the weather was favourable to his turnips at
St. Anne’s Hill. Burke experimented in carrots as a field crop
on his farm at Beaconsfield, though he pointed his sarcasms against
the Duke of Bedford for his devotion to agriculture. Lord Althorp,
in the nineteenth century, maintained the traditions of his official
predecessors. During a serious crisis of affairs, when he was
Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Grey of Dilston called upon him
in Downing Street on political business. Lord Althorp’s first
question, eagerly asked, was “‘ Have you been at Wiseton on your
way up? Have you seen the cows?” The enthusiasm for farm-
ing began to be scientific as well as practical. No new book escaped
the vigilance of agriculturists. Miss Edgeworth’s Essay on Irish
Bulls (1802) had scarcely been published a week before it was
ordered by the secretary of an agricultural society. Nor were the
clergy less zealous. An archdeacon, finding a churchyard culti-
vated for turnips, rebuked the rector with the remark, ‘“‘ This must
not occur again.”’ The reply, ‘‘ Oh no, Mr. Archdeacon, it will be
barley next year,’ shows that, whatever were the shortcomings of
the Church, the eighteenth century clergy were at least devoted to
the rotation of crops.

Every department of agriculture was permeated by a new spirit
of energy and enterprise. Rents rose, but profits outstripped the
rise. New crops were cultivated; swedes, mangel-wurzel, kohl
rabi, prickly comfrey were readily adopted by a new race of agri-
culturists. Breeders spent capital freely in improving live-stock.
New implements were introduced. The economy and handiness of
ploughs like the Norfolk, or the Rotherham ploughs as improved by
James Small of Blackadder Mount, were gradually recognised, and
the cumbrous mediaeval instruments with their extravagant teams
superseded. Meikle’s threshing machine (1784) began to drive
out the flail by its economy of human labour. Numerous patents
were taken out between 1788 and 1816 for drills, reaping, mowing,
haymaking, and winnowing machines, as well as for horse-rakes,
scarifiers, chaff-cutters, turnip-slicers, and other mechanical aids to
agriculture. In the northern counties iron gates and fences began
to be used. The uniformity of weights and measures ! was eagerly

1 Under the Act of Union with Scotland (clause 17) it had been provided
that the same weights and measures which were established in England
should be used throughout the United Kingdom. But the clause remained

LOCAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES 209

discussed and recommended. Cattle-shows, wool-fairs, ploughing-
matches were held in various parts of the country. Counties, like
Durham, Northumberland, Cheshire, and Leicestershire, started
experimental farms. The short-lived Society of “ Improvers in
the Knowledge of Agriculture” had been formed in 1723. The
Society for the ‘“‘ Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Com-
merce’ was instituted in London in 1754. Other associations,
more exclusively agricultural, speedily followed. The Bath and
West of England Society was founded in 1777, the Highland Society
in 1784, the Smithfield Club in 1798. The creation of the Board of
Agriculture in 1793 has been already mentioned. The Farmers’
Club was established in 1793. The first number of the Farmer’s
Magazine, which appeared in January, 1800, rapidly passed through
five editions. Provincial societies multiplied. At Lewes, in 1772,
Lord Sheffield had established a Society for the “‘ Encouragement
of Agriculture, Manufacture and Industry ” ; but it does not seem
to have survived the war with France and the United States. Few
counties were without their organisations for the promotion of
agricultural improvement. One of the first was established at
Odiham in Hampshire. Kent had its agricultural society at
Canterbury (1793) and the Kentish Society at Maidstone. In
Cornwall (1793), Berkshire (1794), Shropshire (1790), at Shifnal and
at Drayton in Leicestershire (1794), in Herefordshire (1797), pro-
vincial societies were founded. The West Riding of Yorkshire had
its society at Sheffield, Lancashire at Manchester, Worcestershire
at Evesham (1792), Huntingdonshire at Kimbolton. In Northamp-
tonshire similar associations were formed at Peterborough, Welling-
borough and Lamport. The list might be enlarged. But, though
many of these societies were short-lived, their foundation illustrates
the new spirit which animated farming at the close of the eighteenth
century.

a dead letter. The establishment of uniformity was difficult. Im 1758 a
Parliamentary Committee reported that there were in use in England four
different legal measures of capacity, the respective quantities being in the
case of the bushel 2124, 2150, 2168, and 2240 cubic inches. The widest
differences existed between the weights and measures of the same county.
Thus in Cornwall, for instance, wheat was sold either by the double Win-
chester of 16 gallons or the treble Winchester of 24 gallons; oats were sold
in the eastern district by the hogshead of 9 Winchesters, in the west by a
double Winchester of 17 gallons; a bushel of seed-wheat bought from a
western farmer ran short of the eastern measure by between one and two
gallons. Butter was sold at 18 oz. to the pound. The customary perch was
18 feet in length instead of the statutory length of 164 feet.
O

210 LARGE FARMS AND CAPITALIST FARMERS

The period from 1780 to 1813 was.one of exceptional activity
in agricultural progress. Apart from the flowing tide of enthusiasm,
landlords and farmers were spurred to fresh exertions and a great
outlay of capital and labour by the large returns on their expendi-
ture. All over the country new facilities of transport and com-
munication began to bring markets to the gates of farmers; new
tracts of land were reclaimed; open arable farms and pasture
commons were broken up, enclosed, and brought into more pro-
fitable cultivation ; vast sums of money were spent on buildings
and improvement. In spite of increased production, prices rose
higher and higher, and carried rents with them. “Corn,” says
Ricardo, “is not high because a rent is paid; but a rent is paid
because corn is high.” In certain cireumstances—if the State is
landlord, or if landowners could combine for the purpose—rents
might raise prices. But the general truth of Ricardo’s view was
illustrated during the French War. From 1790 to 1813, rents rose
with the rise in prices, until over a great part of Great Britain they-
were probably doubled. Even the larger yield from the land
under improved methods of cultivation did not cheapen produce,
reduce prices, and so cause lower rents. On the contrary, prices
were not only maintained, but continued to rise.

This continuously upward tendency in prices was unprecedented.
It cannot be attributed to the operation of the Corn Laws.1_ Down
to 1815 that legislation had scarcely affected prices at all, and
therefore could not influence rents. The rise was rather due to a
variety of causes, some of which were exceptional and temporary.
A series of unprosperous seasons prevailed over the whole available
corn-area of Northern Europe. In England deficient harvests,
though the shortage was to some extent mitigated by the increased
breadth under corn, reduced the home supply at a time when the
growth of an artisan population increased the demand. The country
throughout these years either stood, or thought that it stood, on
the verge of famine. Prices were raised by panic-stricken com-
petition. As the area of the war extended, foreign supplies became
less and less available. The enormous increase in the war-charges
for freight and insurance made Great Britain more and more
dependent on her own produce. Necessity compelled the full
development of her existing resources, as well as the resort to
inferior land. Larger supplies of home-grown corn could only be

1 See chapter xii.

HIGH PRICES DURING THE FRENCH WARS 211

obtained either by improved methods of cultivation or by bringing
untilled land under the—plough. The one method powerfully
stimulated the progress of agriculture, which may be summed up
in increasing the yield and lowering the cost of production ; the
other was the valid justification of the rapid enclosure of wastes,
open-fields, and commons. Much of the land that now was sown
with corn could only be tilled at a profit when prices were high,
because the outlay on its tillage was greater, and the return from
its cultivation was less, than on ordinary land. Yet, as prices then
stood, even this inferior soil was able to bear a rent, and by each
step towards the margin of cultivation, the rental value of land
of better quality was enhanced. Thus Napoleon proved to be
the Triptolemus or patron saint not only of farmers but of land-
lords.

Another cause of the high prices of the time was the state of the
currency. When gold is cheap, commodities are dear. Any great
increase in the production of gold for a time raises prices; the
sovereign becomes of less relative value ; it buys less than before,
and more gold has to be paid for the same quantity. But this
direct effect of gold discoveries was not then in operation ; it had
spent its force, and at the close of the eighteenth century did not
materially affect prices. Similar results were, however, produced
by the immense extension of that system of deferred payment
which is called credit. Paper money was issued in excessive
quantities, not only by the Bank of England but by the private
banks all over the country. A new medium of exchange was
created. This addition to the circulating medium raised prices in
the same kind of way as an actual addition to the quantity of coin.
But there was this important difference. Paper money is only a
promise to pay; it is only representative money, and, unless it
is convertible into gold, the credit which it creates is fictitious and
may be excessive. The immense development of manufacturing
industries and of the canal system, in the years 1785-92, required
increased facilities for carrying on commercial transactions. But
bankers, in their eagerness to create business, made advances on
insufficient or inconvertible securities, discounted bills without
regard to the actual value of the commodities on which the trans-
actions were based, and issued notes far beyond the amount which
their actual funds justified. In 1793 came the first crash. The
Bank of England, warned by the fall of the exchanges and the

212 LARGE FARMS AND CAPITALIST FARMERS

outflow of gold, restricted their issue of notes. A panic followed.
Out of 350 country banks in England and Wales, more than 100
stopped payment; their promises to pay were repudiated ; and
their paper was destroyed at the expense of the holder. The ruin
and the loss of confidence were widespread ; those who escaped
the crash hoarded their money instead of making investments in
mercantile undertakings. But the destruction of so much paper
temporarily restored the proportion between the gold in the country
and the paper by which it was represented.

In 1797 a second crisis occurred. Alarmed at a prospect of
invasion, country depositors crowded to withdraw deposits and
realise their property. There were runs on the country banks, and
such heavy demands for their support were made on the Bank of
England that, on Saturday, February 25, 1797, the stock of coin
and bullion had fallen to under £1,300,000, with every prospect of
a renewal and an increase of the run on the following Monday. On
Sunday, February 26, an Order of Council suspended payments in
cash until Parliament could consider the situation. The merchants
of London came to the rescue of the bank. They guaranteed the
payment of its notes in gold; the national credit was saved, and
the worst of the threatened crisis was averted. But the failures
of country banks were again numerous. Once more the same
process was repeated. Paper money in large quantities was
destroyed at the cost of its holders, and the balance between the
promise and the ability to pay was again readjusted. The experi-
ence was not lost on agriculturists, who found that their land was
not only the most remunerative but the safest investment.

Under the Bank Restriction Act of 1797, the Bank of England
suspended_payment.in coin. In other words a paper currency was
created which was not convertible into gold. The Act was origin-
ally a temporary expedient. But it was not till 1821 that the
bank completely resumed payment in specie. No doubt the
effect of the Act was to aggravate the tendency of prices to rise.
Yet the measure was probably justified by the exceptional cireum-
stances of the war and of trade. It supplied the Government with
gold for the expenses of our own expeditionary forces, as well as
for the payment of subsidies to our allies. It also enabled the
country to carry on the one-sided system of trade to which we
were gradually reduced by the Continental blockade. Our exports
of manufactured goods were excluded from European ports. Con-

FINANCIAL CRISES 213

SS

sequently the materials which we imported were paid for in cash
instead of in goods, and the vessels which conveyed them to our
ports returned in ballast. There was thus a constant drain of gold
from the country. So long as the power to issue inconvertible
notes was sparingly used, the paper currency maintained its nominal
value. But from 1808 onwards such large quantities of paper were
issued, not only by the Bank of England but by country banks,
that it rapidly depreciated as compared with gold. It is probable
that from 1811 to 1813 one-fifth of the enormous prices of agri-
cultural produce were due to the disordered state of the currency.
In 1814, owing partly to the abundant harvest of the previous
year, partly to the collapse of the Continental blockade, prices
rapidly fell. A financial crash followed which caused even more
widespread ruin in country districts than the paroxysm of 1793.
Of the country banks, 240 stopped payment, and 89 became bank-
rupt. The result was a wholesale destruction of bank-paper, the
reduction of thousands of families from wealth to destitution, and
the gradual restoration of the equilibrium of the currency.

The seasons, the war, the growth of population, the disorders of
the currency, combined to raise and maintain. at.a high level the
prices of agricultural produce in. Great..Britain. At the same
time the prohibitive cost of transport. prevented.such. foreign sup-
plies as were then available from reducing. the.prices.of home-grown
corn. Circumstances thus gave British agriculturists a monopoly,
which, after 1815, they endeavoured to preserve by legislation.
Land was not only a most profitable investment, but the fate of
speculators had again and again convinced both landlords and
tenants that land was the safest bank. Thus business caution, as
well as business enterprise, prompted the outlay of capital on agri-
cultural improvement. Economic ideas pointed in the same direc-
tion. The doctrine of John Locke,! that high rents were a symptom
of prosperity still prevailed among politicians. It was also main-
tained that high rents were a necessary spur to agricultural progress.
So long as land remained cheap, farmers rested satisfied with
antiquated practices ; the dearer the land, the more energetic and
enterprising they necessarily became. Young went so far as to
say that the spendthrift, who frequented London club-houses and

1“ An infallible sign of your decay of wealth is the falling of rents, and the
raising of them would be worth the nation’s care’ (Works, ed. 1823, vol. v.
p. 69).

214. LARGE FARMS AND CAPITALIST FARMERS

raised rents to pay his debts of honour, was a greater benefactor
to agriculture than the stay-at-home squire who lived frugally
in order to keep within his ancestral income. No economist of the
day had conceived any other method of satisfying the wants of a
growing population except by improving the existing practices of
farmers or bringing fresh tracts of land under the plough. Advanced
Free Traders like Porter 1 never imagined that a progressive country
could become dependent on foreign nations for its daily food. It
was to the continuous improvement in agricultural methods that
he looked for the means of supplying a population, which, he cal-
culated, would, at the end of the nineteenth century, exceed 40
millions. Nor did he entertain any doubt that, by the progress
of skill and enterprise, the quantity raised in 1840 could be increased
by the requisite 150 per cent.

Encouraged by high profits, approved by economists, justified
by necessity, agriculture advanced rapidly on the new lines of
large farms and large capital. The change was one side of a wider
movement. In the infancy of agriculture and of trade, self-
supporting associations had been formed for mutual defence and
protection. Manorial organisations like trade guilds had begun to
break up, when the central power was firmly established. Now,
once more, agriculture and manufacture were simultaneously
reorganised. Division of labour had become a necessity. Domestic
handicrafts were gathered into populous manufacturing centres,
which were dependent for food on the labour of agriculturists.
Farms ceased to be self-sufficing industries, and became factories
of beef and mutton. The pressure of these conditions demanded
the utmost development of the resources of the soil. The cultiva-
tion of additional land by the most improved methods grew more
and more necessary. Enclosures went on apace. Yet, even in
favourable seasons, it was a struggle to keep pace with growing
needs ; scarcity, if not famine, resulted from deficiency. During
part of the period, foreign supplies might be relied on to avert the
worst. But throughout the Napoleonic wars this resource grew

1“ To supply the United Kingdom with the single article of wheat would
call for the employment of more than twice the amount of shipping which
now annually enters our ports, if indeed it would be possible to procure the
grain from other countries in sufficient quantity ; and to bring to our shores
every article of agricultural produce in the abundance which we now enjoy,
would probably give constant occupation to the mercantile navy of the whole
world ”’ (Progress of the Nation, ed. 1847, p. 136).

RAPID INCREASE OF ENCLOSURES 215
Sy

yearly more uncertain and more costly. The pace of enclosure
was immensely accelerated. In the first 33 years of the reign of
George III., there were 1355 Acts passed; in the 23 years of the
wars with France (1793-1815) there were 1934. It is easy to attri-
bute the great increase of enclosures during this last period solely
to the greed of landlords, eager to profit by the high prices of
agricultural produce. That the land would not have been brought
into cultivation unless it paid to do so, may be admitted. But it
must in justice be remembered that an addition to the cultivated
area was, in existing circumstances, one of the two methods, which
at that time were alone available, of increasing the supply of food,
averting famine, and reducing prices. Economically, enclosures
can be justified. But the processes by which they were sometimes
carried out, were often indefensible, and socially their effects..were
disastrous. On these points more will be said subsequently. Here
it will be enough to reiterate the statement that enclosure meant
not merely reclamation of waste ground, but partition of the com-
mons and extinction of the open-field system. It has been suggested,
on the authority of passages in his tract on Wastes, that Arthur
Young learned to deplore his previous crusade against village farms,
when he saw the effect of enclosures on rural life. What Young
deplored was the loss of a golden opportunity of attaching land
to the home of the cottager. But he never faltered in his con-
viction of the necessity of breaking up the open-fields and
dividing the commons. In the tract on Wasies he emphatically
asserts his wish to see all commons enclosed, and he was too great
a master of his subject not to know that without pasture the arable
village farms must inevitably perish.

The other method of increasing the food supplies of the country
consisted of agricultural improvements. Here also the preparation
of the ground involved changes which bore hardly on small occupiers
of land. The new system of farming required large holdings, to
which a new class of tenant of superior education and intelligence
was attracted. It was on these holdings that capital could be
expended to the greatest advantage, that meat and corn could be
grown in the largest quantities, that most use could be made of
those mechanical aids which cheapened production. Costly im-
provements could not be carried out by small hand-to-mouth >
occupiers, even if their obstinate adherence to antiquated methods
would have allowed them to contemplate the possibility of change.

216 LARGE FARMS AND CAPITALIST FARMERS

But this consolidation of holdings threw into the hands of one
tenant land which had previously been occupied by several. If the
land was laid down to grass, and in the case of heavy land, down
to 1790, this was the most profitable form of enclosure,—there was
also a diminution in the demand for labour, and a consequent
decrease in the population of the village. If, on the other hand,
the land was cultivated as an arable farm, there was probably a
greater demand for labour and possibly an increase in the numbers
of the rural population. Arthur Young in 18011! shows that, out
of 37 enclosed parishes in an arable county like Norfolk, population
had risen in 24, fallen in 8, and remained stationary in 5. It
cannot therefore be said that either enclosures, or the consolidation
of holdings, necessarily depopulated country villages. Whether
this result followed, or did not follow, depended on the use to which
the land was put, though even on arable farms the gradual intro-
duction of machinery, at present limited to the threshing machine,
tended to diminish the demand for labour.

If the country was to be fed, more scientific methods of farming
were necessary. The need was pressing, and both enclosures and
the consolidation of large farms prepared the way for a new stage
of agricultural progress. Hitherto bucolic life had been the pastime
of a fashionable world, the relaxation of statesmen, the artificial
inspiration of poets. But farmers had neither asked nor allowed
scientific aid. The dawn of a new era, in which practical experience
was to be combined with scientific knowledge, was marked by the
lectures of Humphry Davy in 1803. In 1757 Francis Home?
had insisted on the dependence of agriculture on “ Chymistry.”
Without a knowledge of that science, he said, agriculture could not
be reduced to principles. In 1802 the first steps were taken towards
this end. The Board of Agriculture arranged a series of lectures on
“The Connection of Chemistry with Vegetable Physiology,” to be
delivered by Davy, then a young man of twenty-three, and recently
(July, 1801) appointed Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the
Royal Institution of Great Britain. He had already made his
mark as the most brilliant lecturer of the day, attracting round him
by his scientific use of the imagination such men as Dr. Parr and

1 Inquiry into the Propriety of applying Wastes to the Better Maintenance
and Support of the Poor.

*The Principles of Agriculture and Vegetation, by Francis Home, M.D.,
1757.

SIR HUMPHRY DAVY 217

SS

S. T. Coleridge, and the talent, rank, and fashion of London, women
as well as men. His six lectures on agricultural chemistry, com-
mencing May 10, 1803, were delivered before the Board of Agri-
culture. So great was their success that he was appointed Professor
of Chemistry to the Board, and in that capacity gave courses of
lectures during the ten following years. In 1813 the results of his
researches were published in his Hlements of Agricultural Chemistry.
The volume is now out-of-date, though the lecture on ‘“ Soils and
their Analyses,” in spite of the progress of geological science and
the adoption of new classifications, remains of permanent interest.
Many passages that were then listened to as novelties are now com-
monplaces ; others, especially those on manures, have been com-
pletely superseded by the advance of knowledge. But if the book
has ceased to be a practical guide, it remains a historical landmark,
and something more. It is the foundation-stone on which the
science of agricultural chemistry has been reared, and its author
was the direct ancestor of Liebig, Lawes, and Gilbert, to whose
labours, in the field which Davy first explored, modern agriculture
is at every turn so deeply indebted. It was Davy’s work which
inspired the choice by the Royal Agricultural Society (founded in
1838) of its motto “‘ Practice with Science.”

In Thomas Coke of Norfolk! the new system of large farms and
large capital found their most celebrated.champion. In 1776, at
the age of twenty-two, he came into his estate with “the King of
Denmark” as “his nearest neighbour.” Wealthy, devoted to
field sports, and already Member of Parliament for Norfolk, it
seemed improbable that he would find time for farming. But as
an ardent Whig and a prominent supporter of Fox in the House of
Commons, he was excluded by his politics from court life or political
office. In 1778 the refusal of two tenants to accept leases at an
increased rent threw a quantity of land on his hands. He deter-
mined to farm the land himself. From that time till his death in
1842, he stood at the head of the new agricultural movement. On
his own estates his energy was richly rewarded. Dr. Rigby,
writing in 1816, states that the annual rental of Holkham rose from
£2,200 in 1776 to £20,000 in 1816.

When Coke took his land in hand, not an acre of wheat was

1 Coke of Norfolk and his Friends, by A. M. W. Stirling, 2 vols. 1910.

2 The Pamphleteer, vol. xiii. pp. 469-70; Holkham and its Agriculture, 3rd
edition, 1818, pp. 25, 28.

218 LARGE FARMS AND CAPITALIST FARMERS

to be seen from Holkham to Lynn. The thin sandy soil produced
but a scanty yield of rye. Naturally wanting in richness, it was
still further impoverished by a barbarous system of cropping. No
manure was purchased; a few Norfolk sheep with backs like
rabbits, and, here and there, a few half-starved milch cows were
the only live-stock ; the little muck that was produced was miser-
ably poor. Coke determined to grow wheat. He marled and
clayed the land, purchased large quantities of manure, drilled his
wheat and turnips, grew sainfoin and clover, trebled his live-stock.
On the light drifty land in his neighbourhood the Flemish maxim
held good: ‘‘ Point de fourrage, point de bestiaux ; sans bestiaux,
aucun engrais ; sans engrais, nulle recolte.” ‘‘ No keep, no live-
stock ; without stock, no manure; without manure, no crops.”
It is, in fact, the Norfolk proverb, ‘‘ Muck is the mother of money.”
In the last quarter of the eighteenth century the value of bones
as fertilisers was realised.1 The discovery has been attributed to
a Yorkshire fox-hunter who was cleaning out his kennels; others
assign it to farmers in the neighbourhood of Sheffield, where refuse
heaps were formed of the bones which were not available for the
handles of cutlery. By the use of the new discovery Coke profited
largely. He also introduced into the county the use of_artificial
foods like oil-cake, which, with roots, enabled Norfolk farms to
carry increased stock. Under his example and advice stall-feeding
was extensively practised. On Bullock’s Hill near Norwich, during
the great fair of St. Faith’s, drovers assembled from all parts of the
country, especially from Scotland, with herds of half-fed beasts
which were bought up by Norfolk farmers to be fattened for London
markets. The grass lands, on which the beef and mutton of our
ancestors were raised, were deserted for the sands of the eastern
counties, from which under the new farming practice, the metro-
polis drew its meat supplies. Numbers of animals fattened on
nutritious food gave farmers the command of the richest manure,
fertilised their land, and enabled them not only to grow wheat
but to verify the maxim “ never to sow a crop unless there is con-
dition to grow it luxuriantly.”

In nine years Coke had succeeded in growing good crops of wheat
on the land which he farmed himself. He next set himself to
improve the—live-stock. After patient trial of other breeds, and

1 Bones were ground at a mill in Lancashire in 1794 by a local farmer who
sold his surplus to his neighbours.

COKE OF NORFOLK a 219

especially of Shorthorns among cattle and of the New Leicesters
and Merinos among sheep, he adopted Devons and Southdowns.
His efforts were not confined to the home-farm. Early and late
he worked in his smock-frock, assisting tenants to improve their
flocks and herds. Grass lands, till he gave them his attention,
were wholly neglected in the district. If meadow or pasture
wanted renewal, or arable land was to be laid down in grass, farmers
either allowed it to tumble down, or threw indiscriminately on
the ground a quantity of seed drawn at haphazard from their own
or their neighbour’s ricks, containing as much rank weed as nutri-
tious herbage. It was a mere chance whether the sour or the sweet
grasses were aided in their struggle for existence. Stilling-
fleet, in 1760, had distinguished the good and bad herbage by
excellent illustrations of the kinds best calculated to produce the
richest hay and sweetest pasture. ‘The Society of Arts, Manu-
facture and Commerce had offered premiums for the best collections
of the best kinds, and in Edinburgh the Lawsons were experimenting
on grasses. But Coke was the first landlord who appreciated the
value of the distinctions by applying them to his own land. In
May and June, when the grasses were in bloom, he gave his simple
botanical lessons to the children of his tenantry, who scoured the
country to procure his stocks of seed.

Impressed with the community of interest among owners, occu-
piers, and labourers, Coke stimulated the enterprise of his tenants,
encouraged them to _put more money and more-labour into the land,
and assisted them to take advantage of every new invention and
discovery. Experiments with drill husbandry on 3,000 acres of
corn land convinced him of its value in economy of time, in saving
of seed, in securing an equal depth of sowing, and in facilitating the
cleaning of the land. He calculated that he saved in seed a bushel
and a half per acre, and increased the yield per acre by twelve
bushels. As with the drill, so with other innovations. He tested
every novelty himself, and offered to his neighbours only the results
of his own successful experience. It was thus that the practice of
drilling turnips and wheat, and the value of sainfoin, swedes, mangel-
wurzel, and potatoes were forced on the notice of Norfolk farmers.
His farm-buildings, dwelling-houses, and cottages were models to
other landlords. On them he spared no reasonable expense.
They cost him, during his tenure of the property, more than half
a million of money. By offering long leases of twenty-one years,

220 LARGE FARMS AND CAPITALIST FARMERS

he guaranteed to improving farmers a return for their energy and
outlay. Two years before the expiration of a lease, the tenant
was informed of the new rent proposed, and offered a renewal.
‘“* My best bank,” said one of his farmers, “is my land.” At the
same time he guarded against the mischief of a long unrestricted
tenancy by covenants regulating the course of high-class cultivation.
Though management clauses were then comparatively unknown
in English leases, his farms commanded competition among
the pick of English farmers. ‘‘ Live and let live” was not
only a toast at the Holkham sheep-shearings, but a rule in
the control of the Holkham estate. Cobbett was not prejudiced
in favour of landlords. Yet even he was compelled to admit
the benefits which Coke’s tenants derived from his paternal
rule. ‘‘ Every one,” he writes in 1821, “made use of the
expressions towards him which affectionate children use towards
their parents.”

One great obstacle to the improvement of Norfolk farming
remained. Farmers of the eighteenth century lived, thought, and
farmed like farmers of the thirteenth century. Wheat instead of
rye might be grown with success ; turnips, if drilled, were more
easily hoed and yielded a heavier crop than those which were sown
broadcast ; marl and clay might help to consolidate drifting soil.
But the neighbouring farmers were suspicious.of new methods, and
distrusted a young man who disobeyed the saws and maxims of
their forefathers. Politics ran so high that Coke’s Southdowns
were denounced as “ Whiggish sheep.” It was nine years before
he found anyone to imitate him in growing wheat. “It might be
good for Mr. Coke; but it was not good enough for them.” As
to potatoes, the best they would say was, that “ perhaps they
wouldn’t poison the pigs.” Even those who had given up broad-
cast sowing still preferred the dibber to the drill. Sixteen years
passed before the implement was adopted. Coke himself calculated
that his improvements travelled at the rate of a mile a year. The
Holkham sheep-shearings did much by ocular demonstration to
break down traditions and prejudices. These meetings originated
in 1778, in Coke’s own ignorance of farming matters ; small parties
of farmers were annually invited to discuss poraambiied topics at
his house and aid him with their practical advice. Before many
years had passed, the gatherings had grown larger, and Coke had
become a teacher as well as a learner. The Holkham sheep-

THE HOLKHAM SHEEP-SHEARINGS 221

shearing in June, 1806 is described in the Farmer’s Magazine? in
the stilted language of the day, as “‘ the happy resort of the most
distinguished patrons and amateurs of Georgic employments.” In
1818 open house was kept at Holkham for a week; hundreds of
persons assembled from all parts of Great Britain, the Continent,
and America. The mornings were spent in inspecting the land and
the stock ; at three o’clock, six hundred persons sate down to din-
ner; the rest of each day was spent in discussion, toasts, and
speeches. The Emperor of Russia sent a special representative,
and among the learners was Erskine, who abandoned the study of
Coke at Westminster Hall to gather the wisdom of his namesake
at Holkham. At the sheep-shearings, year after year, were col-
lected practical and theoretical agriculturists, farmers from every
district, breeders of every kind of stock, who compared notes and
exchanged experiences. In many other parts of England similar
meetings were held by great landlords, like the Duke of Bedford at
Woburn.? or Lord Egremont at Petworth, who in their own localities
were carrying on the same work as Coke.

At Holkham and Woburn sheep-shearings, both landlords and
farmers were learners; both required to be educated in the new
principles of their altered business. It was by no means uncommon
to find landlords who prevented progress by refusing to let land
except at will, or bound their tenants by restrictive covenants to
follow obsolete practices. There was, moreover, a tendency among
the land-owning class to expect from rent-paying tenants a greater
outlay on the land than a farmer’s capital could bear or an occupier
was justified in making. The question of improvements had not
yet assumed the complicated forms which have developed under
modern agricultural methods. But it had already been raised in
the simpler shape. The liability for improvements of a permanent
character required to be defined; no distinction was yet drawn
between changes which added some lasting benefit to the holding
and those whose effects were exhausted within the limits of a brief
occupation. Expenditure which might legitimately be borne by
landlords was often demanded from tenants at will or even from year
to year. Thousands of acres still lay unproductive because owners
looked to occupiers for the reclamation of waste, the drainage of

1 Farmer's Magazine, August, 1806.

°For a description of a Woburn sheep-shearing, or “this truly rational
Agricultural Fete,” see Farmer’s Magazine for July, 1800.

222 LARGE FARMS AND CAPITALIST FARMERS

swamps, or an embankment against floods. It was one of the
lessons which were taught by the agricultural depression after the
peace of 1815 that landowners must find the money for lasting
improvements effected on their property.

That farmers should have realised the possibility of improving
traditional practices was a great step in advance. The new race
of men, who were beginning to occupy land, were better educated,
commanded more capital, were more open to new ideas and more
enterprising than their predecessors. Their holdings were larger,
and offered greater scope for energy and experiment. The Reporters
to the Board of Agriculture on Northumberland (1805) lay stress
on the size of the farms, and on the spirit of enterprise and in
dependence which now animated the tenants. ‘‘Scarcely a year
passes without some of them making extensive tours for the sole
purpose of examining modes of culture, of purchasing or hiring the
most improved breeds of stock, and seeing the operations of new-
invented and most useful implements.’’ The Reporter on Middle-
sex (1798) emphasises the stagnation of farming among small
occupiers. “It is rather the larger farmers and yeomen, or men
who occupy their own land, that mostly introduce improvements
in the practice of agriculture, and that uniformly grow much
greater crops of corn, and produce more beef and mutton per acre
than others of a smaller capital.”” The Oxfordshire Reporter (1809)
says: “If you go into Banbury market next Thursday, you may
distinguish the farmers from enclosures from those from open
fields ; quite a different sort of men; the farmers as much changed
as their husbandry—quite new men, in point of knowledge and
ideas.’’ Elsewhere in the same Report,—it is Arthur Young who
writes,—occurs the following passage: The Oxfordshire farmers
“are now in the period of a great change in their ideas, knowledge,
practice, and other circumstances. Enclosing to a greater pro-
portional amount than in almost any other county in the kingdom,
has changed the men as much as it has improved the country ; they
are now in the ebullition of this change ; a vast amelioration has
been wrought, and is working; and a great deal of ignorance and
barbarity remains. The Goths and Vandals of open-fields touch
the civilisation of enclosures. Men have been taught to think,
and till that moment arrives, nothing can be done effectively.
When I passed from the conversation of the farmers I was recom-
mended to call on, to that of men whom chance threw in my way,

THE NEW RACE OF TENANTS 223
>

T seemed to have lost a century in time, or to have moved a thousand
miles inaday. Liberal communication, the result of enlarged ideas,
was contrasted with a dark ignorance under the covert of wise
suspicions ; a sullen reserve lest landlords should be rendered too
knowing, and false information given under the hope that it
might deceive, were in such opposition, that it was easy to see
the change, however it might work, had not done its business. The
old open-field school must die off before new ideas can become
generally rooted.’ In Lincolnshire, in the early years of George
IfI., Arthur Young had found few points in the management of
arable land which did not merit condemnation. The progress,
which he noted as Reporter to the Board of Agriculture in 1799,
was largely due to the changed character of the farmers. “I have
not,’ he says, ‘‘ seen a set more liberal in any part of the kingdom.
Industrious, active, enlightened, free from all foolish and expensive
show, . . . they live comfortably and hospitably, as good farmers
ought to live; and in my opinion are remarkably void of those
rooted prejudices which sometimes are reasonably objected to this
race of men. I met with many who had mounted their nags, and
quitted their homes purposely to examine other parts of the king-
dom ; had done it with enlarged views, and to the benefit of their
own cultivation.”

CHAPTER XI.

OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS
(1793 -1815).

Condition of open-field arable land and pasture commons as described by the
Reporters to the Board of Agriculture, 1793-1815; (1) The North and
North-Western District ; (2) West Midland and South-Western District ;
(3) South-Eastern and Midland District ; (4) Eastern and North-Eastern
District ; (5) the Fens ; the cumulative effect of the evidence ; procedure
under private Enclosure Acts ; its defects and cost ; the General enclosure
Act of 1801 ; the Inclosure Commissioners ; the new Board of Agriculture.

Ir might perhaps be supposed that in 1793 the agricultural defects
of the ancient system of open arable fields and common pasture
had been remedied by experience; that open-field farmers had
shared in the general progress of farming; that time alone was
needed to raise them to the higher level of an improved standard ;
that, therefore, enclosures had ceased to be an economic necessity.
In 1773, an important Act of Parliament had been passed,! which
attempted to help open-field farmers in adapting their inconvenient
system of occupation to the improved practices of recent agriculture.
Three-fourths of the partners in village-farms were empowered,
with the consent of the landowner and the titheowner, to appoint
field-reeves, and through them to regulate and improve the cultiva-
tion of the open arable fields. But any arrangement made under
these powers was only to last six years, and, partly for this reason,
the Act seems to have been from the first almost a dead letter.
At Hunmanby, on the wolds of the East Riding of Yorkshire,”
the provisions of the Act were certainly put in force, and it is

113 Geo. III. ec. 81.

2 Tsaac Leatham’s General View of the Agriculture of the Hast Riding of York-
shire (1794), p. 45. Thomas Stone, in his Sugyestions for Rendering the In-
closure of Common Fields and Waste Lands a source of Population and Riches
(1787), says that he knew of no instance in which the Act had been put in
force.

CONDITION OF OPEN-FIELDS AND COMMONS = 225

possible that it was also applied at Wilburton in Cambridgeshire.
With these exceptions, little, if any, use seems to have been made
of a well-intentioned piece of legislation.

Small progress had in fact been made among the cultivators of
open-fields. Here and there, the new spirit of agricultural enter-
prise had influenced the occupiers of village farms. In rare instances
improved practices were introduced. But the demand for increased
food supplies had become, as our ancestors were experiencing, too
pressing for delay. Any continuous series of adverse seasons created
a real scarcity of bread, and more than once during the Napoleonic
wars, famine was at the door. Unless food could be produced at
home, it could not be obtained elsewhere. An extension of the
cultivated area was the quickest means of adding to production.
Agriculturists at the close of the eighteenth century were convinced
that no adequate increase in the produce of the soil could be obtained,
unless open-field farms were broken up, and the commons brought
into more profitable cultivation. If they were right in that belief,
the great agricultural change was justified, which established the
uniform system with which we are familiar to-day. The point is
one of the greatest importance. The uncritical praises lavished
by sixteenth and seventeenth century travellers on open-field
farming are of little value because they had no higher standard
with which to compare its results. Such a standard had now been
to some extent created. It may therefore be useful to illustrate,
from the contemporary records supplied by the Reports to the
Board of Agriculture,! the condition of open arable land and of
pasture-commons in the years 1793-1815. The material is arranged
according to the four districts into which, for statistical purposes,
the English counties are usually divided. The cumulative force of
the evidence is great. But some of it relates to wastes which were
not attached to village farms, although common of pasture and
fuel was often claimed over the area by the inhabitants of the
neighbourhood. As to the reliability of the whole evidence, it

1The Reports to the Board are extant in two forms. The quarto editions
were drafts, intended for private circulation and for correction by practical
agriculturists belonging to the district under survey. They all belong to
the years 1793-94-95. The octavo editions are the Reports in their final
form. They were published at various dates, ranging from 1795 in the case
of Holt’s Lancashire, to 1815 when Quayle’s Channel Islands was issued. In
some cases the Reports are practically the same in their draft and final forms.
Sometimes, on the other hand, they were re-written by other Reporters with
scarcely any reference to the original Survey.

ty

226 OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS

would be only fair to add that the Reporters were not likely to be
prejudiced in favour of open-field farms or unappropriated commons.

1. In the North and North-Western District, enclosure had gone on
apace since 1770. In Northumberland, for instance (1805), very
little common land was left which could be made profitable under .
the plough. 120,000 acres were said to have been enclosed “ in
the last thirty years.” 1 In Durham, it is stated that “‘ the lands,
or common fields of townships, were for the most part inclosed
soon after the Restoration.”’ The Reporter laments “ that in some
of the rich parts of the county, particularly in the neighbourhood
of the capital of it, large quantities of land should still lie totally
deprived of the benefit of cultivation, in commons; and that
ancient inclosures, by being subject to the perverse custom of
intercommon, be prevented from that degree of fertilization, to
which the easy opportunity of procuring manure, in most cases,
would certainly soon carry the improvement of them; in their
present state, little or no benefit is derived to any person what-
soever, entitled either to common, or intercommon, from the use
of them.’’* The waste lands of the West Riding of Yorkshire #*
are calculated at 265,000 acres capable of cultivation. The Reporter
proposes to “‘ add to these the common. fields which are also exten-
sive, and susceptible of as much improvement as the wastes.” The
man on inclosed land “ has not the wis inertiae of his stupid neighbour
to contend with him, before he can commence any alteration in his
management . .. he is completely master of his land, which, in
its open state, is only half his own. This is strongly evident in the
cultivation of turnips, or other vegetables for the winter consump-
tion of cattle; they are constantly cultivated in inclosures, when
they are never thought of in the open fields in some parts.” In
the North Riding “‘ few open or common fields now remain, nearly
the whole having long been inclosed.’’* But on the commons the
practice of surcharging is said to have increased to “ an alarming
degree.” It had become a frequent custom for persons, often
dwelling in distant townships, to take single fields which were
entitled to common rights, and stock the commons with an excessive
quantity of cattle. In Cumberland (1794),° there were still 150,000

1 Northumberland, by J. Bailey and G. Culley (8rd edition, 1805), p. 126.

2 Granger’s Durham (1794), p. 44.

8 Brown’s West Riding of Yorkshire (1799), pp. 131, 133.

* Tuke’s North Riding (1800), pp. 90, 199.
5 Cumberland, by J. Bailey and G. Culley (1794), pp. 202, 215, 236.

NORTH AND NORTH-WESTERN DISTRICT 227

acres of improvable common, which were “ generally overstocked.”
** No improvement of breed was possible, while a man’s ewes mixed
promiscuously with his neighbour’s flocks.” There were “few
commons but have parts which are liable to rot, nor can the sheep
be prevented from depasturing it.” “If any part of the flock
had the scab or other infectious disease, there was no means of
preventing it from spreading.” A large part of these commons
was good corn-land ; if enclosed, and part ploughed for grain crops,
not only would there be an increased supply of corn, but, instead
of ‘“‘ the ill-formed, poor, starved, meagre animals that depasture
it at present,’ there might be “‘ an abundant supply of fat mutton
sent to our big towns.’ In Cheshire (1794),1 there were said to
be of “common fields, probably not so much as 1000 acres.”
Staffordshire 2 in 1808 contained little more than 1000 acres of open-
fields, which “ are generally imperfectly cultivated, and exhausted
by hard tillage.’’ Since the reduction of their area, the general
produce of the county is stated to be greater, the stock better, and
the rent higher by 5s. an acre. The county was “‘ emerging out of
barbarism.” But, thirty years before, on some of the “ best land
of the county,” the rotation had been “ (1) fallow; (2) wheat ;
(3) barley ; (4) oats; and often oats repeated, and then left to
Nature ; the worst lands left to pasture and spontaneous rubbish ;
turnips and artificial grasses scarcely at all known in farming.”
In Derbyshire * (1811), a list of the thirteen open arable fields which
remained is given. ‘‘ Many of them,” says the Reporter, ‘“‘ must
remain in their present open, unproductive, and disgraceful state,
(though principally in the best stratum in the County) ”’ owing to
the expense of enclosure. There were, however, still thirty-six
open commons, such as Elmton, with its “deep cart-ruts, and
every other species of injury and neglect that can, perhaps be
shown on useful land; part of it has been ploughed at no distant
period, as completely exhausted as could be, and then resigned to
Weeds and Paltry”’; or Hollington, which, “ though overgrown
with Rushes through neglect, is on a rich Red Marl soil”; or
Roston, “‘ miserably carted on, cut up, and in want of Draining ;
in wet seasons it generally rots the sheep depastured on it ; .. . pro-
bably injurious, rather than beneficial, in its present state, both to
the Parishioners and the Public.”

1 Wedge’s Cheshire (1794), p. 8. ? Pitt’s Staffordshire (1808), pp. 13, 51, 313,
3 Farey’s Derbyshire (1813), vol. ii. p. 77.

228 OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS

2. In the West Midland and South-Western District, Shropshire
(1794) 1 “‘ does not contain much common field lands, most of these
having been formerly enclosed, and before acts of parliament for
that purpose were in use; but the inconvenience of the property
being detached and intermixed in small parcels, is severely felt,
as is also the inconvenience of having the farm buildings in villages.”
There still remained large commons of which the largest were Clun
Forest and Morfe Common, near Bridgnorth. The Reporter
strongly advocates their enclosure. ‘‘ The idea of leaving them in
their unimproved state, to bear chiefly gorse bushes, and fern, is
now completely scouted, except by a very few, who have falsely
conceived that the inclosing of them is an injury to the poor; but
if those persons had seen as much of the contrary effects in that
respect as I have, I am fully persuaded their opposition would
at once cease. Let those who doubt, go round the commons now
open, and view the miserable huts, and poor, ill-cultivated, im-
poverished spots erected, or rather thrown together, and inclosed by
themselves, for which they pay 6d. or ls. per year, which, by loss
of time both to the man and his family, affords them a very
trifle towards their maintenance, yet operates upon their minds
as a sort of independence; this idea leads the man to lose many
days work by which he gets a habit of indolence ; a daughter kept
at home to milk a poor half-starved cow, who being open to tempta-
tions, soon turns harlot, and becomes a distressed, ignorant mother,
instead of making a good useful servant.”

Herefordshire? (1794) contained a great number of open-field
farms, occupying some of “the best land of the county,” and
pursuing the “ invariable rotation of (1) fallow, (2) wheat, (3) pease
or oats, and then fallow again.” Speaking of the waste lands at
the foot of the Black Mountains above the Golden Valley, the
Reporter says: ‘‘I do appeal to such gentlemen as have often
served on Grand Juries in this county, whether they have not had
more felons brought before them from that than from any other
quarter of the county.” He attributes this lawlessness to the
right, which the cottager possessed in virtue of his arable holding,
of turning out stock on the hills, and to the encouragement which
this right afforded him of living by any means other than his
labour.

1 Bishton’s Shropshire (1794), pp. 8, 24.
2 Clark’s Herefordshire (1794), pp. 69, 28.

WEST MIDLAND AND SOUTH-WESTERN DISTRICT 229

Worcestershire 1 (1794) contained from 10,000 to 20,000 acres of
wastes, “‘in general depastured by a miserable breed of sheep,
belonging to the adjoining cottagers and occupiers, placed there
for the sake of their fleeces, the meat of which seldom reaches the
market, a third fleece being mostly the last return they live to
make.’ Yet, adds the Reporter, ‘‘ most of the common or waste
land is capable of being converted into tillage of the first quality.”
Considerable tracts still lay in open-fields, especially in the neigh-
bourhood of Bredon, Ripple, and to the east of Worcester. “‘ The
advantages from inclosing common fields . .. have been very
considerable ;...the rent has always risen, and mostly in a very
great proportion ; the increase of produce is very great, the value
of stock has advanced almost beyond conception; . . . indeed it
is in inclosures alone, that any improvement in the line of breeding
in general can be made.” Speaking of the district towards the
Gloucestershire border, it is stated that “‘ the lands being in com-
mon fields, and property much intermixed, there can be of course
but little experimental husbandry ; being, by custom, tied down
to three crops and a fallow. ... The mixture of property in our
fields prevents our land being drained, and one negligent farmer,
from not opening his drains, will frequently flood the lands of ten
that lie above, to the very great loss of his neighbours and com-
munity at large. Add to this, that although our lands are naturally
well adapted to the breed of sheep, yet the draining etc. is so little
attended to in general, that, out of at least 1000 sheep, annually
pastured in our open fields, not more than forty, on an average, are
annually drawn out for slaughter, or other uses ; infectious disorders,
rot, scab, etc. sweep them off, which would not be the case if property
were separated.” Of the pasture commons, it is said that they are
“ overstocked,” ‘‘ produce a beggarly breed of sheep,” and “ are
of little or no value.” Again, it is stated that, where enclosures
“have been completed fifteen or twenty years, property is trebled ;
the lands drained ; and if the land has not been converted into
pasture, the produce of grain very much increased ; where converted
into pasture, the stock of sheep and cattle wonderfully improved.
Where there are large commons, advantages are innumerable,
to population as well as cultivation, and instead of a horde of
pilferers, you obtain a skilful race, as well of mechanics as other
labourers.”’

1 Pomeroy’s Worcestershire (1794), pp. 17, 16, App. pp. 2, 3, 5.

230 OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS

In Gloucestershire ! (1794) common fields and common meadows
still prevailed over extensive districts. Of the Cotswold district
the Reporter says: ‘‘ probably no part of the kingdom has been
more improved within the last forty years than the Cotswold Hills.
The first inclosures are about that standing ; but the greater part
are of a later date. Three parishes are now inclosing ; and out of
about thirteen, which still remain in the common field state, two,
I understand, are taking the requisite measures for an inclosure : the
advantages are great, rent more than doubled, the produce of every
kind proportionably increased.” Of the Vale of Gloucester he
says: “‘I know one acre which is divided into eight lands, and
spread over a large common field, so that a man must travel two
or three miles to visit it all. But though this is a remarkable
instance of minute division, yet, it takes place to such a degree, as
very much to impede all the processes of husbandry. But this is
not the worst; the lands shooting different ways, some serve as
headlands to turn on in ploughing others; and frequently when
the good manager has sown his corn, and it is come up, his slovenly
neighbour turns upon it, and cuts up more for him, than his own is
worth. It likewise makes one occupier subservient to another in
cropping his land; and in water furrowing, one sloven may keep
the water on, and poison the lands of two or three industrious
neighbours.’ Lot meadows were numerous in the county, on which
the herbage was common after hay-making. Several tracts such
as Corse Lawn, Huntley and Gorsley Commons were practically
wastes, ‘‘ not only of very little real utility, but productive of one
very great nuisance, that of the erection of cottages by idle and
dissolute people, sometimes from the neighbourhood, and sometimes
strangers. The chief building materials are store-poles, stolen from
the neighbouring woods. These cottages are seldom or never the
abode of honest industry, but serve for harbour to poachers and
thieves of all descriptions.”’ In the Vale of Tewkesbury the common
fields were “ very subject to rot. . .. Though it is reckoned they
(farmers) lose their flocks once in three years on average, there is a
considerable quantity kept, the farmers being persuaded they could
not raise corn without them. The arable fields after harvest are
stocked without stint. When spring seedtime commences, they
are confined to the fallow quarter of the field, and stinted in pro-
portion to the properties; they are folded every night, and kept

1 Turner’s Gloucestershire (1794), pp. 10, 39, 49.

GLOUCESTERSHIRE IN 1794 AND 1807 231

so hard, that scarce a blade of grass or even a thistle escapes them ;
and this management is thought essentially necessary, especially
on the stiff soils, to keep them in good order, such soils being too
hard to plough in very dry weather, and, of course, not eligible in
wet. The grass and weeds, without this expedient, would often
get so much ahead as not to be afterwards conquered.”

Another agricultural Report on Gloucestershire + was presented
in 1807. The Reporter mentions that, in the reign of George III.,
**more than seventy Acts have passed the Parliament for inclosing
or laying into severalty.” ‘‘ By these proceedings, the landlord
and occupier are benefited ; the former in an advance of rent, the
latter in the increase of crops. On the Cotswolds, many thousand
acres are brought into cultivation, which before were productive
of little more than furze and a few scanty blades of grass. In the
Vale, by the inclosure of common fields, lands have been laid
together, and rescued from the immemorial custom, or routine of
crops—wheat, beans, and fallow ; and the farmers have found, to
their great advantage, that clover, vetches and turnips may be
raised in the fallow year, which was before attended only with
labour and expense.” The Reporter enumerates five advantages
resulting from enclosure of common field farms :—(1) an increase
of crops and rent ; (2) the commutation of tithes ; (3) the drainage
of the land; (4) the removal of the injury and cause of disputes
occasioned by turning on the head- and fore-lands of neighbours ;
(5) the encouragement of population. Of the advantages of enclos-
ing common pastures or wastes he is equally convinced; “the
common or waste lands in the Vale are seldom stinted to a definite
quantity of stock in proportion to the number of acres occupied ;
but the cottager claims by custom to stock equally with the largest
landholder. It is justly questioned whether any profit accrues to
either from the depasturing of sheep, since the waste commons,
being under no agricultural management, are usually poisoned by
stagnated water, which corrupts or renders unwholesome the
herbage, producing rot, and other diseases in the miserable animals
that are turned adrift to seek their food there.” Since 1794 Corse
Common had been enclosed. From the results the Reporter of 1807
illustrates some of the benefits of enclosure. ‘‘ The supposed
advantages derived by cottagers, in having food for a few sheep and
geese on a neighbouring common, have usually been brought for-

1 Rudge’s Gloucestershire (1807), pp. 89, 250.

232 OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS

ward as objections to the enclosing system. This question was much
agitated with regard to the inclosure of Corse Chace in this
county ; but if the present state and appearance of it, since the
inclosure in 1796, be contrasted to what it was before, or its present
produce of corn to the sheep that used to run over it, little doubt
can remain of the advantageous result in favour of the community ;
1350 acres of wet and rushy waste were inclosed, and, in the first
year of cultivation, the produce was calculated at 20,250 bushels
of wheat, or of some other crop in equal proportion. If it could
even be proved that some cottagers were deprived of a few trifling
advantages, yet the small losses of individuals ought not to stand
in the way of certain improvements on a large scale.”” The Reporter
also quotes two Cotswold parishes, formerly open-fields, but now
enclosed, as examples of increased produce. In Aldsworth, the
annual produce of corn rose from 720 quarters to 2300 quarters ;
in Eastington, it increased from 690 quarters to 2100 quarters.
He adds that enclosures encouraged labour. ‘‘ Labourers, who
formerly were under the necessity of seeking employment in London
and other places, now find it in sufficient quantity at home in
their respective parishes.”’

In Somersetshire ! (1797) the two largest districts of waste land
were the Brent Marsh and King’s Sedgmoor. The Reporter
describes the Brent Marsh as a country which had “ been hereto-
fore much neglected, probably on account of the stagnant waters,
and unwholesome air. But of late many efforts have been made
to improve the soil, by draining and enclosing, under a variety of
Acts of Parliament. The benefit resulting therefrom has been
astonishing.”’ The total area was over 20,000 acres, of which
many thousands, “heretofore overflown . .. and of little or no
value, are become fine grazing and dairy lands.’ Besides the
general improvement to the health of the district, “scarcely a
farmer can now be found who does not possess a considerable landed
property ; and many whose fathers lived in idleness and sloth, on
the precarious support of a few half-starved cows, or a few limping
geese, are now in affluence.”’ On the South Marsh, chiefly formed
by the river Parret, ‘‘ near thirty thousand acres of fine land are
frequently overflown for a considerable time together, rendering
the herbage unwholesome for the cattle, and the air unhealthy to
the inhabitants.”’ An Act of Parliament had been recently (1791)

1 Billingsley’s Somersetshire (1797), pp. 167-73, 188.

DORSETSHIRE AND WILTSHIRE 233:

obtained for draining a portion of this fen called King’s Sedgmoor,
containing ‘‘ about 20,000 acres.”’

The Dorsetshire! commons in 1794 were “ generally overrun
with furze and ant-hills,’’ worth 8s. an acre unenclosed, but “ highly
proper to cultivate, and, if converted, would be worth from 18s.
to 20s. an acre.” A second Report on Dorsetshire was issued in
18122 The Reporter calls attention to the “half year meads.’’
One person has the hay, and another person the “ after-shear.”
These meadows were not near commonable fields, and the origin
of the claim is not clear. Obviously, neither of the persons who
shared the produce was likely to attempt to improve the herbage.

In Wiltshire * (1794) the Reporter fixes on four disadvantages of
open-field husbandry: (1) the obligation to plough and crop all
soils alike ; (2) the impossibility of improving sheep ; (3) the diffi-
culty of raising food for their winter keep ; (4) the expense, trouble,
and excessive number of horses required to cultivate detached
dispersed lands. On the south-east side of the county lay a con-
siderable tract of open-fields, and in the north-west, in the
centre of the richest land of the district, were scattered numerous
commons. The open arable fields are said to be in “a _ very
bad state of husbandry,” and the common pastures in a “ very
neglected unimproved ’’ condition. ‘‘ There are,’’ says the Reporter,
*“numerous instances in which the common-field arable land lets
for less than half the price of the inclosed arable adjoining ; and the
commons are very seldom reckoned worth anything, in valuing any
estate that has a right on them.” For the last half-century very
little land had been enclosed, ‘“‘ although the improvement on the
lands, heretofore inclosed, has been so very great.” “‘ The reason
seems to have been the very great difficulty and expence of making
new roads in a country naturally wet and deep, and where the old
public roads were, till within the last few years, almost impassable.”’
Good turnpike roads had now been introduced; villages were
energetic in repairing the approaches to them; and “it is to be
hoped that so great an improvement as that of inclosing and
cultivating the commonable lands will no longer be neglected.”
The crying need was the want of drainage. The common pastures

1 Claridge’s Dorsetshire (1793), p. 43.
2 Stevenson’s Dorsetshire (1812), p. 307.

3 Davis’ Wiltshire (1794), p. 136. This is, perhaps, the best of all the agri-
cultural Reports.

234 OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS

from Westbury to Cricklade were in a “ wet rotten state,” depas-
tured by an “unprofitable kind of stock,’ but “ wanting only
inclosing and draining to make them as good pasture land as many
of the surrounding inclosures.” Some of the cold arable fields
would have been much more valuable if turned to pasture, and, in
their undrained state, even the driest were “ not safe for sheep in
a@ wet autumn.”

3. From the South-Eastern and Midland District the evidence is
the fullest, because the district was still in a great measure farmed
on the open-field system.

In Berkshire! (1794) there were 220,000 acres of open-fields,
and downs, to 170,000 acres of inclosed land. Half of the county
“‘is still lymg in common fields ; and though it is not divided into
such very small parcels as in some other counties, the farmer
labours under all the inconvenience of commonable land ; and by
that, is withheld from improving or treating his land, so as to
return the produce which it ought to do, if entire, and under a
good course of husbandry.” ‘“ We generally see on all the commons
and waste lands, a number of miserable cattle, sheep, and horses,
which are a disgrace to their respective breeds, and the cause of
many distempers.”

In Buckinghamshire? (1794) 91,906 acres remained in open-
fields. The Reporters point out that ‘‘ the slovenly operations of
one man are often of serious consequence to his neighbours,
with whose property his lands may lie, and generally do lie, very
much intermixed. Every one is aware of the noxious quality of
weeds, whose downy and winged seeds are wafted by every wind,
and are deposited upon those lands which are contiguous to them ;
and which before were perhaps as clean as the nature of them
would admit, to the manifest injury of the careful and attentive
farmer. Inclosures would, in a certain degree, lessen so great an
evil; they would also prevent the inroads of other people’s cattle,
as particularized in the parish of Wendover, and in which one man
held eighteen acres in thirty-one different allotments.”

Oxfordshire * in 1794 contained “ upwards of an hundred unin-
closed parishes or hamlets.’”’ The Reporter enumerates several
advantages of enclosure. ‘“ The first of these is getting rid of the

1 Pearce’s Berkshire (1794), pp. 13, 49, 59.
2 James’ and Malcolm’s Buckinghamshire (1794), pp. 32, 58.
3 Davis’s Oxfordshire (1794), pp. 22, 30.

OXFORDSHIRE IN 1794 AND 1809 235

restrictions of the former course of husbandry, and appropriating
each of the various sorts of land to that use to which it is best
adapted. 2. The prevention of the loss of time, both as to labourers
and cattle, in travelling ...from one end of a parish to another ;
and also in fetching the horses from distant commons before they
go to work. 3. There is a much better chance of escaping the
distempers to which cattle of all kinds are liable from being mixed
with those infected, particularly the scab in sheep. This cireum-
stance, in common fields, must operate as a discouragement to the
improvement of stock. ... 5. The great benefit which arises
from draining lands, which cannot so well, if at all, be done on
single acres and half acres, and would effectually prevent the rot
amongst sheep, so very common in open field land. 6. Lastly
the preventing of constant quarrels, which happen as well from the
trespasses of cattle, as by ploughing away from each others’ land.”
Otmoor, near Islip, containing “‘ about four thousand acres,” is
mentioned as the largest and most valuable tract of waste in the
county. ‘“ This whole tract of land lies so extremely flat, that the
water, in wet seasons, stands on it a long time together, and of
course renders it very unwholesome to the cattle, as well as the
neighbourhood. ‘The sheep are thereby subject to the rot, and the
larger cattle to a disease called the moor evil. The abuses here
(as is the case of most commons where many parishes are concerned)
are very great, there being no regular stint, but each neighbouring
householder turns out upon the moor what number he pleases.
There are flocks of geese likewise kept on this common, by which
several people gain a livelihood.”

In 1809, Arthur Young reported on Oxfordshire,! where he
found that, in proportion to its extent, more land had been enclosed
since 1770 in the county than in any other part of England. Otmoor
and Wychwood Forest were still uninclosed wastes. Apart from
the question of productiveness, he urged that the enclosure of the
latter district was necessary on moral grounds. “ The vicinity is
filled with poachers, deer-stealers, thieves, and pilferers of every
kind ; offences of almost every description abound so much, that
the offenders are a terror to all quiet and well-disposed persons ;
and Oxford gaol would be uninhabited, were it not for this fertile
source of crimes.” Nearly one hundred parishes still remained in
open-fields. ‘It is,’ says Young, speaking of open-field practices,

1 Young’s Oxfordshire (1809), pp. 87, 236, 239, 102.

236 OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS

“‘a well-known fact that men have ploughed their land in the
night for the express purpose of stealing a furrow from their
neighbour ; and at all times it is a constant practice in some to
plough from each other.” ‘I have known,” says one of his
informants, ‘“‘ years wherein not a single sheep totally kept in the
open field has escaped the rot.”” Yet on this same land, enclosed
and drained, not one sheep died from the rot in nineteen years.

In 1770, the South and East of Warwickshire had mainly con-
sisted of open-fields. Now (1794)! there still remained 50,000
acres. But in 1813? it is reported that a very small area continued
in an unenclosed state.

Northamptonshire,’ in 1794, contained 89 parishes still in open-
fields. There was, therefore, “above one third of the whole
(county) by no means in the best state of cultivation of which it is
susceptible.”” The commons did not “ yield pasturage,” “at the
highest computation,’ which was worth more than “ 5s. an acre.
Indeed, if the calculation was fairly made, the occupiers are not
benefited to the extent of half that sum, as the stock which they
send to depasture upon these commons is liable to so many diseases
and accidents, as, one year with another, nearly counterbalances
any advantages which can be derived from possessing this right. ...
By every information that could be procured, it appears that the
stock is not kept with a view to any profit that can possibly arise
from the sales, but merely as the means of cultivating and manuring
the soil. Indeed, long experience has evinced, that no species
of stock kept in these open fields can be carried to market on
terms nearly so advantageous as the same articles raised by those
farmers who occupy inclosed lands; nor is it to be supposed,
considering the manner in which the stock is treated, that the
owners will pay much attention to the improvement of the different
breeds.” As to the arable land, “ the several occupiers must con-
form to the ancient mode of cultivation of each division or field
in which their lands are respectively situated ; from which it will
appear that one obstinate tenant (and fortunate must that parish
be accounted, where only one tenant of that description may be
found) has it in his power to prevent the introduction of any improve-
ment. ... The tillage lands are divided into small lots of two or

1 Wedge’s Warwickshire (1794), p. 20.
? Murray’s Warwickshire (1813), pp. 62, 144,
3 Donaldson’s Northants (1794), pp. 24, 29, 58.

SOUTH-EASTERN AND MIDLAND DISTRICTS 237
SS

three old-fashioned, broad, crooked ridges (gathered very high
towards the middle, or crown, being the only means of drainage
that the manner in which the lands are occupied will admit of),
and consequently the farmer possessing 100 acres must traverse
the whole extent of the parish, however large, in order to cultivate
this small portion.”

In Leicestershire 1 (1800) very little open-field land was left
“not more than 10,000 acres.’”’ In Nottinghamshire? (1798)
enclosure was proceeding rapidly. ‘‘Good land, with extensive
commons,” is said to be most capable of improvement ; “ clay land
with small commons,” to have been the least capable. Midway
between the two came “clay land with large commons.” But
““even the worst’? may be increased in value by a fourth, after
deducting all improvements.

In Middlesex? (1794) many thousands of acres of wastes lay
unenclosed—“‘ an absolute nuisance to the public.”” The commons
of Enfield, Edmonton, and Tottenham were frequently flooded ;
but no effort was made to keep the ditches scoured. In 1798 there
were still 17,000 acres of ‘‘ common meadows, all capable of improve-
ment, not producing to the community in their present state more
than 4s. an acre.”” To the Reporter’s eyes the commons were “a
real injury to the public,” partly because they tempted the poor
man to settle on their borders, build a cottage out of the material
they afforded, and trust to his pigs and poultry for a living ; partly
because they became “‘ the constant rendezvous of gypseys, strollers
and other loose persons . . . the resort of footpads and highway-
men.” The arable land of the county is estimated at 23,000 acres,
of which, in 1798, 20,000 were in open-fields.

In Hampshire * (1813) the Reporter found the commons so over-
stocked as to produce little or no substantial benefit to those who
enjoyed the grazing rights, and the surface “‘ shamefully deterio-
rated’ by the exercise of rights of turbary or paring turf for
fuel. He hopes to see “‘ every species of intercommonable rights
extinguished,” and, with them, “‘ that nest and conservatory of
sloth, idleness, and misery, which is uniformly to be witnessed in

1 Pitt’s Leicestershire (1800), p. 68.
2 Lowe’s Nottinghamshire (1798), pp. 19, 165.

3 Foot’s Middlesex (1794), pp. 30, 32, and Middleton’s Middlesex (1798), pp.
98, 103, 138.

4 Vancouver’s Hampshire (1813), pp. 318, 496.

238 OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS

the vicinity of all commons, waste-lands, and forests throughout
the kingdom.”

4. In the Eastern and North-Eastern counties, neither Essex
nor Hertfordshire possessed many commons or open-field farms.
A description of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of Epping
and Hainault Forests in Essex (1795) has been already quoted.
In Hertfordshire 2 (1795) the Reporter notes that the few remaining
open-fields had been freed from the old restraints, and were cul-
tivated as if they were held in separate occupation. Speaking of
pasture commons, he says: “ Where wastes and commons are
most extensive, there I have perceived that cottagers are the most
wretched and worthless ; accustomed to relie on a precarious and
a vagabond subsistence, from land in a state of Nature, when
that fails they recur to pilfering. . . . For cottagers of this descrip-
tion the game is preserved and by them destroyed.” Of Cheshunt
Common ? (1813) it is stated that “‘ the common was not fed by the
poor, but by a parcel of jobbers, who hired cottages, that they
might eat up the whole.”

Two-thirds of the county of Huntingdon? in 1793 lay in open-
fields. Proprietors rarely had more than two or three acres con-
tiguous. “ The residue lies in acres and half acres quite disjointed,
and tenants under the same land-owner cross each other con-
tinually in performing their necessary daily labour. ... The sheep
of the common fields and commons are of a very inferior sort,
except in some few instances, and little if any care is taken either
in the breeding, feeding or preserving them ; and from the neglected
state of the land on which they are depastured, and the scanty
provision for their support in winter, and the consequent diseases
to which they are liable, their wool is also of a very inferior quality.”

On the uplands of Lincolnshire ®° (1794) there were but few open-
field farms. ‘“* The sheep of the common fields,” says the Reporter,
‘**T do not bring into this account from the circumstances of hard-
ship, attending the scantiness of their food, the wetness of their
layer, the neglect of a proper choice in their breed, their being
overheated in being (where folded) dogged to their confinement,

1 See p. 154.

2 Walker’s Hertfordshire (1795), pp. 48, 53.

3 Young’s Hertfordshire (1804), p. 45.

4 Stone’s Huntingdonshire (1793), pp. 8, 17, 15.
> Stone’s Lincolnshire (1794), p. 62.

LINCOLNSHIRE AND THE EAST RIDING 239
SS

where they are often too much crowded ; the scab, the rot, and
every circumstance attend them, which can delay their being
profitable ; so that it may be reasonably concluded, that they are
of less value than those bred in inclosures, from 10s. to 15s. per
head, and their fleeces are equally unproductive.” Five years
later Arthur Young reported on this part of the county.1 He
describes the true Lincolnshire cattle which he found on open-
field farms as a “‘ wretched’ breed; “ they all run together on a
pasture, without the least thought of selection.’’ At three years.
old, they were worth little more than half what they fetched on
enclosed land. Open-field farmers “breed four or five calves
from a wretched cow before they sell it, so that a great quantity
of food is sadly misapplied.”’ It was from this “ post-legged,
square-buttocked breed of demi-elephants,’ to use Marshall’s
description, that the Navy beef of England was chiefly provided.
The open-field sheep had not improved. ‘I never,” says Young,
apparently with surprise, “‘ saw a fold in the county, except in a
few open fields about Stamford ; ... but the sheep are miserably
bad ; in wool 8 or 9 to the tod.” In the East Riding? of Yorkshire
(1794) the pasture commons varied “in extent from two hundred
to two thousand five hundred acres, and all of them may be con-
verted into useful land by drains, sub-divisions, plantations, and

other improvements. ... When commons are not stinted in
proportion to the stock they are capable of keeping, very little
benefit is derived from them. ... It is not a little extraordinary

to see a starving stock upon a common of five hundred acres soaked
with water, when the expense of a few shillings for each right,
prudently laid out in drains and bridges, would double its value.
Such is the obstinacy of men, and so difficult is it to induce them
to form the same opinion; though an union of sentiment would
much more materially promote their interest.”

Norfolk * in 1796 contained 80,000 acres of unimproved commons,
and about one-fourth of the arable area of the county was tilled
on the common or open-field system. ‘‘ There is,’’ says the Reporter,
who was the well-known Nathaniel Kent, “‘ still a considerable deal
of common-field land in Norfolk, though a much less proportion
than in many other counties; for notwithstanding common rights

1 Young’s Lincolnshire (1799), pp. 303, 374.
® Leatham’s Hast Riding (1794), p. 39.
3 Kent’s Norfolk (1796), pp. 6, 32, 72, 73, 81, 158.

240 OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS

for great cattle exist in all of them, and even sheep-walk privileges
in many, yet the natural industry of the people is such, that, when-
ever a person can get four or five acres together, he plants a white-
thorn hedge round it, and sets an oak at every rod distance, which
is consented to by a kind of general courtesy from one neighbour
to another.” “‘ Land,”’ he elsewhere remarks, ‘‘ when very much
divided, occasions considerable loss of time to the occupier, in
going over a great deal of useless space, in keeping a communication
with the different pieces. As it lies generally in long narrow slips,
it is but seldom it can receive any benefit from cross-ploughing and
harrowing, therefore it cannot be kept so clean; but what is still
worse, there can be but little variety observed in the system of
cropping ; because the right which every parishioner has of com-
monage over the field, a great part of the year, prevents the sowing
of turnips, clover, or other grass seeds, and consequently cramps
a farmer in the stock which he would otherwise keep.’’ Commons
of pasture lay “in all parts of the county, and are very different
in their quality. Those in the neighbourhood of Wymondham
and Attleborough are equal to the finest land in the county, worth,
at least, twenty shillings an acre; being capable of making either
good pasture, or producing corn, hemp or flax. There are other
parts which partake of a wet nature and some of a furze and heathy
quality ; but they are most of them worth improving, and all
of them capable of producing something ; and it is a lamentable
thing, that those large tracts of land should be suffered to remain
in their present unprofitable state.” Under the head of Poor
Rates, the Reporter observes “‘ that the larger the common, the
greater the number and the more miserable are the poor.” In
the parishes of Horsford, Hevingham, and Marsham, which “ link
into each other, from four to nine miles from Norwich, there are
not less than 3,000 acres of waste land, and yet the average of the
rates are, at least, ten shillings in the pound. This shows the
absolute necessity of doing something with these lands, or these,
uncultivated, will utterly ruin the cultivated parts,—for these
mistaken people place a fallacious dependence upon these pre-
carious commons, and do not trust to the returns of regular labour,
which would be, by far, a better support to them.” Of Wymondham
Common, Arthur Young! wrote in 1801. The area was 2,000
acres; but “the benefit to the poor is little or nothing further

1 Inquiry into the propriety of applying Wastes, etc., 1801.

BEDFORDSHIRE ue 241

than the keeping a few geese; as to cows there are very few.
The common is so overstocked with sheep that cows would be
starved on it ; and these sheep are mostly in the hands of jobbers,
who hire small spots contiguous [to the common] for no other
purpose. These men monopolise almost the whole.”

Bedfordshire in 17941 was famous for its backward farming.
It still disputed with Cambridgeshire the reputation of being the
Boeotia of agriculture. It contained 217,000 acres of open or
common fields, common meadows, common pastures, and waste
lands, to 68,000 acres of enclosure and 22,000 acres of woodlands.
As a rule, the enclosed land was as badly farmed as the open-fields.
Hence the practice of enclosing had fallen into disrepute. The
Reporter seems to suggest another reason for the reluctance of
landlords to enclose. ‘It has,’’ he says, “‘ frequently occurred to
me in practice, that some of the occupiers of a common field are
pursuing the best possible mode of management the situations
are capable of, whilst others are reducing land intermixed there-
with to the lowest state of poverty, beggary and rubbish... .
Upon the inclosure of common fields it frequently occurs that
commissioners are obliged to consider such worn-out land of con-
siderably less value than such parts as have been well-farmed ;
of course, the proprietors, whose misfortune it has been to have
their land badly occupied, have had a smaller share, upon the
general division of the property, than they otherwise would have
had, in case their land had been better farmed.’ In one respect
enclosed land had the advantage. Sheep in Bedfordshire were
practically only used as manure-carriers. They were “ generally
of a very unprofitable quality, but more especially those bred in
the common fields, where the provision intended for their main-
tenance is generally unwholesome and scanty. ... From the
undrained state of the commons and common fields, the stock of
sheep depastured upon them is but too frequently swept away by
the rot ; and, it being absolutely necessary, according to the present
system of farming, that their places should be constantly supplied
with others for the folding of the land, under such circumstances
of casualty and necessity, the healthiness of the animal when
purchased is the first and almost the only object of consideration
with the farmers.’ Sheep, from any county, of any breed, and of
any description, were therefore bought indiscriminately. Nine-

1 Stone’s Bedfordshire (1794) pp. 11, 61, 31.
Q

242 OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS

tenths of the sheep of the common fields of the country are “ coarse
in their heads and necks, proportionately large in their bones, high
on the leg, narrow in their bosoms, shoulders, chines and quarters,
and light in their thighs, and their wool is generally of a very in-
different quality, weighing from three to four pounds per fleece. . . .
The sheep bred upon the inclosures are generally of a much superior
quality . . . very useful and profitable.” Thirteen years later
(1807), 48 parishes, or about a third of the county, were farmed
on the open-field system. To the rapid spread of enclosures and to
the influence and example of great landlords, the Reporter attributed
the material improvement in the sheep stock of the county.

Out of 147,000 acres of arable land in Cambridgeshire? (1794)
132,000 lay in open-fields. The rental of the enclosed land averaged
18s. per acre, and that of the open-fields 10s. On the uplands
of the county, as distinguished from the fen districts, there were
2,000 acres of half-yearly meadow lands which were grazed by the
village partners from hay-harvest till Easter ; 7,500 acres of high-
land common ; 8,000 acres of fen or moor common, which, though
easily drained, “‘ contribute little to the support of the stock, though
ereatly to the disease of the rot in the sheep and cows.” The
Reporter considered that no general improvement of the farming
of the county was possible until the intermixed lands of “* the com-
mon open fields ’’ were laid together and occupied in severalty. He
made it part of his business to enquire into the feeling of “ the
yeomanry in their sedate and sober moments ... as to this
important innovation upon the establishment of ages. A few have
given an unqualified dissent, but they were flock-masters ; others
have concurred under certain limitations, but the mass of the
farmers are decidedly for the measure in question.’ He estimates
that the general average produce per acre of enclosed land exceeded
that of the open-fields in the following proportions: wheat, 3
bushels 1 peck; rye, 3 pecks; barley, 15 bushels 1 peck; oats,
1 bushel 1 peck ; peas, 2 bushels 1 peck. ‘“ But, if a single instance
be adverted to, and a comparison made between the parishes of
Childersley, which is enclosed, and Hardwicke, which remains in
open common field, and which parishes appear by the journal to
consist of a perfectly similar soil,’ the result is much more favour-
able to enclosures. Childersley produced 24 bushels of wheat to

1 Batchelor’s Bedfordshire (1808), pp. 217, 537.
2 Vancouver's Cambridgeshire (1794), pp. 193, 203, 195, 112, 111.

THE FEN-LANDS 3: 243

Hardwicke’s 16 bushels ; 36 bushels of barley to 18 bushels; 36
bushels of oats to 18 bushels, or 20 bushels of oats to 8 bushels. To
this increase of produce must be added another advantage. Chil-
dersley and Knapwell, both enclosed, were entirely exempt from the
rot among their sheep, while the neighbouring parishes were
desolated by the disease. The ravages of the rot which are
chronicled may probably have been exceptional. On the open-
fields of Gamlingay a fourth of the flock, or 340 sheep, perished in
1793. The mortality is attributed to the want of drainage in the
arable land. At Croxton in 1793 1,000 sheep were rotted on the
unenclosed lands, and, in the same year, 700 on the open-fields
of Eltsley. In 1813 another Report on Cambridgeshire! was
issued. In the interval of twelve years, the area of open-field and
common had been greatly lessened. In consequence, says the
Reporter, Cambridgeshire farmers “‘ have an opportunity of redeem-
ing the county from the imputation it has so long lain under, of
being the worst cultivated in England, and of proving (the fact)
that the same industry, spirit and skill which have been manifested
in other parts of the Kingdom, exist also in this, the open-field
state and system precluding the possibility of exercising them.”’

To the Eastern and North Midland districts mainly belonged
the fen-lands. This vast tract of waterlogged land still included
Peterborough Fen in Northamptonshire, embraced small portions
of both Norfolk and Suffolk, and extended over a considerable
part of Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, and Lincolnshire. At
a moderate computation, the total area, which at the best was
imperfectly drained, and lay to a great extent unenclosed, com-
prised 600,000 acres. The drainage works of the seventeenth
century had only partially succeeded. Where the system had been
carefully watched and maintained, the land had been greatly
improved. But the neglected outfalls were once more choked with
silt; the porous banks admitted the water almost as fast as it
was removed by the draining-mills; in some instances they had
been broken down by floods and not repaired ; in some they had
been wilfully damaged or destroyed by the commoners. Yet much
of this drowned area, either actually or potentially, consisted of
some of the richest land in Great Britain. Some portions of the
drier ground were cultivated on the open-field system, and the
commons were numerous and extensive.

1 Gooch’s Cambridgeshire (1813), pp. 2, 56.

244 OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS

Peterborough Fen! (1793) consisted of from 6,000 to 7,000
acres of “ fine level land, of a soil equal to any perhaps in the king-
dom of Great Britain, and susceptible of the highest cultivation.”
In its present wet state it was dangerous to stock. Farmers living
in the neighbourhood never turned their cattle on it except in very
dry seasons. It was, however, depastured by the horses, cattle,
and sheep of 32 parishes in the Soke of Peterborough. ‘“‘ Con-
sidering the present mode of management,” says the Reporter, “ it
is impossible that any advantage can arise to the persons having
right therein.”” But, in his opinion, the land, if properly drained,
enclosed, and tilled, might yield a greatly increased produce and
employ from 1300 to 1400 hands.

The Huntingdonshire fens? contained (1793) 44,000 acres.
Marshall speaks of “‘ the disgraceful state in which some of these
lands were suffered to remain (a blank in English territory).” The
Reporter says that the fen is “ generally unproductive, being
constantly either covered with water, or at least in too wet a state
for cultivation.” Of so little value was it that those who exercised
rights over it frequently preferred relinquishing their claims to
_ paying the drainage taxes. Very considerable portions of the fen
districts were occupied by meres—shallow lakes filled with water
which was often brackish. Their only value lay in the reeds, which
were used for thatching or in malting, and in the fishing. But
many of the meres were so silted up with mud that the fish had
diminished in numbers. Their drainage, says the Reporter in 1811,
would be of inestimable service to the health of the inhabitants.
‘““ They are awful reservoirs of stagnated water, which poisons the
air for many miles round about, and sickens and frequently destroys
many of the inhabitants, especially such as are not natives.”

In Cambridgeshire * (1794) there were “ 50,000 acres of improved
fen, and 200,000 acres of wastes and unimproved fen.’” Vancouver,
who was the Reporter to the Board, walked over every parish in
the district in order to obtain reliable information. Except on
foot, he could not penetrate into the recesses of the district. Neigh-
bouring parishes were ignorant of each other’s condition. The
roads were often impassable, and at their best were only repaired

1 Donaldson’s Northamptonshire (1793), p. 30.

2 Stone’s Huntingdonshire (1793), pp. 8, 13.

$ Parkinson’s Huntingdonshire (1813), p. 21.

4 Vancouver’s Cambridgeshire (1794), pp. 25, 36, 151, 154, 184, 186, 187, 149.

CAMBRIDGESHIRE FENS ™ 245

with a silt which resembled “ pulverised sand.’”’ Almost every-
where he speaks of the “‘ deplorable condition of the drainage,” and
consequently of the “ miserable state of cultivation ’’ which pre-
vailed on the open-field lands. The fen-lands of Chatteris, Elm,
Leverington, Parson Drove, Wisbech St. Mary’s and Thorney,
amounting to about 50,000 acres yield ‘“‘ a produce far beyond the
richest high lands in the county, averaging a rent of more than fifteen
shillings per acre. Whereas the waste, the drowned, and partially
improved fens, amounting on a moderate computation to 150,000
acres, cannot be fairly averaged at more than four shillings per
acre.’ Very rarely were the open-fields and commons even in a
fair state of cultivation. Wilburton was a favourable example.
There field-reeves had been appointed by the parish, with power
to open up neglected drains at the expense of those to whom they
belonged. But almost universally the common pasture was deterio-
rated by turf-cutting ; the marsh lands, if tilled, were exhausted
by barbarous cropping ; and effective drainage was prevented by
the intermixed condition in which the land was occupied. At
Snailwell, an open upland parish, there was a flock of 1,200 Norfolk
sheep, which were only “kept healthy by being prevented from
feeding upon the wet moory fen common.” The general attitude
of the ague-stricken, opium-eating fen-men towards the drainage
of the district may be illustrated by the example of Burwell, a chalk-
land parish on the Suffolk border. “‘ Any attempt in contempla-
tion of the better drainage”’ of Burwell fen, already “ greatly
injured by the digging of turf,’ and “constantly inundated,’ is
“* considered as hostile to the true interests of these deluded people.”
In 1794 the principal Lincolnshire ! commons were the East and
West (29,000 acres), the Wildmore Fen (10,500 acres), the East
and West Deeping Fens (15,000 acres). The East and West and
Wildmore Fens were “under better regulations than any others
in the fen country.” “ Yet,” says the Reporter, “they are
extremely wet and unprofitable in their present state, standing much
in need of drainage, are generally overstocked, and dug up for turf
and fuel. The cattle and sheep depastured upon them are often
very unhealthy, and of an inferior sort, occasioned by the scanti-
ness, as well as the bad quality of their food, and the wetness of
their lair. Geese, with which these commons are generally stocked
. are often subject to be destroyed. It is not a constant prac-

1 Stone’s Lincolnshire (1794), pp. 18, 22.

246 OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS

tice with the commoners to take all their cattle off the fens upon the
approach of winter ; but some of the worst of the neat cattle, with
the horses,—and particularly those upon Wildmore Fen,—are left
to abide the event of the winter season; and it seldom happens
that of the neat cattle many escape the effects of a severe winter.
The horses are driven to such distress for food that they eat up every
remaining dead thistle, and are said to devour the hair off the
manes and tails of each other and also the dung of geese.” A
second Reporter ? (1799), Arthur Young, speaks of ‘‘ whole acres ”
in Wildmore Fen as “covered with thistles and nettles four feet
high and more. There are men that have vast numbers of geese,
even to 1000 and more. .. . In 1793 it was estimated that 40,000
sheep, or one per acre, rotted on the three fens (2.e. on East and West
and Wildmore Fens). So wild a country nurses up a race of people
as wild as the fen; and thus the morals and eternal welfare of
numbers are hazarded and ruined for want of an inclosure. .. .
In discourse at Louth upon the characters of the poor, observations
were made upon the consequences of great commons in nursing
up a mischievous race of people; and instanced that, on the very
day we were talking, a gang of villains were brought to Louth gaol
from Coningsby, who had committed numberless outrages upon
cattle and corn; laming, killing, cutting off tails, and wounding a
variety of cattle, hogs, and sheep; and that many of them were
commoners on the immense fens of East, West, and Wildmore.”
These descriptions apply to commons under the best regulations.
Deeping Fens may be taken as examples of the ordinary manage-
ment of Lincolnshire commons in the fen districts. ‘“‘ They stand,”
thinks the Reporter of 1794,? “ very much in need of inclosing and
draining, as the cattle and sheep depastured thereon are very
unhealthy. The occupiers frequently, in one season, lose four
fifths of their stock. These commons are without stint, and almost
every cottage within the manors has a common right belonging
to it. Every kind of depredation is made upon this land in cutting
up the best of the turf for fuel; and the farmers in the neighbour-
hood, having common rights, availing themselves of a fine season,
turn on 7 or 800 sheep each, to ease their inclosed land, whilst the
mere cottager cannot get a bite for a cow ; but yet the cottager, in
his turn, in a colourable way, takes the stock of a foreigner as his
own, who occasionally turns on immense quantities of stock in good

1 Young’s Lincolnshire (1799), p. 223. 2 Stone’s Lincolnshire, p. 22.

LINCOLNSHIRE FENS N 247

seasons. The cattle and sheep, which are constantly depastured
on this common, are of a very unthrifty ill-shapen kind, from
being frequently starved, and no attention paid to their breed.
Geese are the only animals which are at any time thrifty; and
these frequently, when young, die of the cramp, or, when plucked,
in consequence of the excessive bleakness and wetness of the com-
mons. A goose pays annually from ls. to 16d. by being 4 times
plucked. These commons are the frequent resort of thieves, who
convey the cattle into distant Counties for sale.”

The North Fens round the Isle of Axholm formed in 1794 another
large area (12,000 acres) of commons and wastes. If “ divided
and inclosed,”’ says the Reporter,! they “‘ would for the most part
make very valuable land ... in their present state, they are
chiefly covered with water, and in summer throw forth the coarsest
of productions ; the best parts, which are those nearest the enclosed
high lands, are constantly pared and burnt to produce vegetable
ashes. ... The more remote parts of the common are dug up
for fuel. On account of the general wetness of those commons,
and their being constantly overstocked by the large occupiers of
contiguous estates, or in such seasons as the depasturage is desirable
in summer, to ease the inclosed land, the cattle and sheep necessarily
depastured thereon at all seasons being those of the cottagers, who
are for the most part destitute of provision for them in winter, are
always unthrifty, and subject to various diseases, which render
them very unprofitable to the occupiers.”’ The farming of the
open arable fields had, in the Reporter’s opinion, deteriorated
rather than progressed. “‘If,’’ he says,? ‘‘ those gentlemen, whether
proprietors or agents, who have any concern in the management
of common fields, will examine into the present mode of occupancy
of the different classes of them . . . they will in most cases find
them in a weak impoverished state ; and that the original systematic
farming of them is either lost or laid aside, and that the agriculture
of the common fields of this county has rather declined than
improved.” The Cambridgeshire Reporter,? it may be added,
formed the same opinion of the open-fields in that county, and
he produces some evidence to prove that the rental of open farms
had fallen since the seventeenth century.

The general impression left by this mass of evidence is that
the agricultural defects of the intermixture of land under the

1 Stone, p. 29. 2 Stone, p. 56. 3 Vancouver, p. 97.

248 OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS

open-field system were overwhelming and ineradicable; that as
an instrument of land cultivation it had probably deteriorated
since the thirteenth century; that no increased production or
general adoption of improved practices could be expected under the
ancient system. But the Reporters note exceptions, from which
other conclusions may possibly be drawn. In some districts the
customary rotations had been abandoned for independent cultiva-
tion, or modified so as to admit some variation of cropping. Thus,
by agreement, in Berkshire a portion of the fields was “ hitched,”
or, according to the Wiltshire equivalent, “hooked.” In other
words, common rights of pasture on the arable land were suspended
so as to allow the cultivation of turnips, clover, or potatoes. LElse-
where, again, portions of the arable land were withdrawn from
tillage to serve as cow-commons. Nor must it be supposed that
enclosed land was always better cultivated than open-field farms.
The Bedfordshire and Lincolnshire Reporters, for example, state
that in certain cases enclosure had produced no improvement,
and in Wiltshire the Reporter hints that open-field regulations at
least prevented some abuses to which land held in severalty was
liable. In some districts landlords imposed upon tenants of
separate holdings the same restrictions and course of cropping by
which they had been fettered as occupiers of land in open-fields.
Without a large expenditure on equipment the agricultural con-
ditions of enclosed land were often worsened, rather than bettered.
Thus the Somersetshire Reporter quotes an example from the
Mendip Hills, where, when land had been enclosed, the landlord
refused to erect the necessary buildings. Similar cases might
have been collected from many other parts of the country. In
these respects, as well as in others, landlords had yet to be taught
the business of owning and letting land. There were “ Goths and
Vandals,” not only among tenants, but also among owners.

Before any accurate estimate can be formed of the agricultural
advantages or defects of arable farming on intermixed strips of
land subject to common grazing rights, and of stock breeding and
rearing on pasture commons, it is necessary to allow for some
possibilities of improvement by the cultivators of open-fields and
for some neglected opportunities by landlords and tenants of enclosed
land. But, when every reasonable allowance has been made, it is
clear that the balance was overwhelmingly in favour of separate
occupation. As an instrument of production the ancient system

PROCEDURE IN ENCLOSURES 249

was inferior. Every advance in science made by agriculture, and
every new resource which is adopted, only served to accentuate
the relative disadvantages of open-field farming. Change was, in
the circumstances, necessary. It was generally effected by obtain-
ing Parliamentary sanction for an enclosure.

The ordinary procedure,! by which open-fields or commons were
enclosed under Parliamentary authority, opened with a Petition
presented to Parliament by persons locally interested. The Petition
was signed by the owner of the land or lord of the manor, by the
owner of the tithes, and by a majority of the persons interested.
No fixed rule seems to have been followed, as to the proportion of
consents and dissents. But Parliamentary Committees looked to
the values as well as to the numbers which were represented. On
this Petition, by leave of the House, a Bill was introduced, read a
first and second time, and then referred to a Committee, which
might consist of the whole House or of selected members. The
Committee, after receiving counter-petitions and hearing evidence,
reported to the House, that the standing orders had, or had not,
been complied with ; that the allegations were, or were not, true ;
that they were, or were not, satisfied that the parties concerned
had consented to the Bill. On the Committee’s Report, the Bill
either was rejected, or was read a third time, passed, sent to the
Lords, and received the Royal Assent. If the Bill passed, the
Commissioners, or Commissioner, named in the Act, arrived at the
village. There they heard the claims of the persons interested,
and made their award, distributing the property in separate owner-
ship among those who had succeeded in establishing their claims,
with due regard to the “ quality, quantity, and contiguity ” of the
land.

The procedure was open to abuses. Even if it is assumed that
a Parliamentary Committee, largely composed of landed _pro-
prietors, was always disinterested on questions affecting land,
little trouble seems to have been taken to elicit the opinions of
small claimants. Schemes of enclosure rarely began with a public
meeting of the parish. The principal owners generally met in
secret, arranged the points in which their own interests conflicted,
selected the solicitor and surveyor, nominated the Commissioners,

1 An Essay upon the nature and method of ascertaining the specific shares of
proprietors upon the inclosure of common fields, by the Rev. Henry Sacheverell
Homer (1766).

250 OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS

settled the terms of the petition. Even the next step—that of
obtaining signatures—might be taken privately. Sometimes it
happened that the first intimation which the bulk of the inhabitants
received of the scheme was that the petition had been presented,
and that leave to bring in an enclosure Bill had been granted. To
prevent so flagrant an abuse, clauses as to notice had been generally
inserted in Bills from 1727 onwards. But, in order to secure the
necessary publicity of proceedings, the House of Commons in 1774
made it a standing order that notice of the scheme must be affixed
to the door of the church of the parish affected, for three Sundays
in the months of August or September. Other standing orders
corrected other abuses in the procedure. They regulated the pay-
ments of the Commissioners, required them to account for all
monies assessed or expended by them, restricted the choice of men
who could fill the office, limited their powers of dealing with the
titles of claimants, and laid down the principle that the allotments
to titheowners and lords of manors should be stated in the Bill.
At all stages of the proceedings heavy costs were incurred. The
fees paid to Parliamentary officials were considerable. If a tract
of common land was to be enclosed, over which several parishes
claimed rights, fees were charged for each parish. On this ground,
partly, the Lincolnshire Reporter explains the delay in enclosing
the East and West and Wildmore Fens. Forty-seven parishes
were there affected, and the general Act would be charged as forty-
seven Acts, with fees in proportion. Witnesses had to attend the
Committee of the House of Commons and subsequently of the
House of Lords. There might be postponements, delays, and
protracted intervals; but the witnesses, often professional men,
had either to be maintained in London or to make two or more
costly journeys to town. Such an expenditure was generally pro-
hibitive for the opponents of the Bill. Unable to fee lawyers,
produce witnesses, or urge their claims in person, they were obliged
to content themselves with a counter-petition, which, possibly,
might not be referred to the Committee. Nor did the cost cease
when the Bill was passed. There were still the expenses of the
Commissioners and their clerk ; the fees for the surveyor and his
survey, and the valuer and his valuation; the charges of the
lawyers in proving or contesting claims, preparing the award,
and other miscellaneous business; the outlay on roads, gates,
bridges, drainage, and other expenditure necessitated by the

A GENERAL ENCLOSURE BILL 251

enclosure of the land. Where the area was large, a portion of the
land was usually sold to pay the necessary expenses. But the
cost of fencing the portions allotted to individuals was thrown
upon the owners, and the smaller the allotment, the greater the
relative burden. Small men might well hesitate, apart from the
uncertainty of proving their title, to support an enclosure scheme,
since the value of their allotment might be almost swallowed up
in the expense of surrounding it with a hedge.

Many small tracts of common land were left unenclosed, because
the extravagant cost threatened to absorb the possible profits of
the undertaking. A general Enclosure Act would, it was urged,
reduce the cost of enclosing small areas, promote uniformity of
legislative action by embodying the best methods of procedure
and the most requisite safeguards which experience suggested, and
provide means for overcoming opposition by modifying the existing
powers of resistance. On all these grounds, a Bill was framed by
the Board of Agriculture. It was strongly opposed in Parliament.!
Many persons were interested in the continuance of the existing
procedure. ‘‘ What,’’ asks one of the Board’s Reporters, “ would
become of the poor but honest attorney, officers of Parliament, and
a long train of etc, etc, who obtain a decent livelihood from the
trifling fees of every individual inclosure Bill—all these of infinite
use to the community, and must be encouraged whether the wastes
be enclosed or not ? . . . The waste lands, in the dribbling difficult
way they are at present inclosed, will cost the country upwards
of 20 millions to these gentry etc. which on a general Inclosure
Bill would be done for less than one.” 2 The first Bill proposed
by the Board was rejected mainly through the influence of
these private interests. A further attempt was made in May, 1797,
when two Bills were introduced. The first was wrecked by the
opposition of titheowners. One of the chief advantages of enclosures
was that tithes were usually extinguished by an allotment of land
in lieu. This commutation of tithe was favoured by the Board,
which in consequence incurred the suspicion of being hostile to
the Established Church. The House of Lords seems to have been
particularly influenced by this view. Though the first of the two
Bills passed the Commons, it was rejected in the Upper House.
The second Bill did not advance beyond the Committee stage in

1 Arthur Young’s Lecture before the Board of Agriculture, May, 1809.
2 Brown’s West Riding, App. I., p. 14.

252 OPEN-FIELD FARMS AND PASTURE COMMONS

the House of Commons. Finally, in 1801, the first General Enclosure
Act (41 Geo. III. c. 109) was passed “ for consolidating in one Act
certain provisions usually inserted in Acts of Inclosure, and for
facilitating the mode of proving the several facts usually required
on the passing of such Acts.” No alteration in the machinery of
enclosure was made. Private Acts of Parliament were still required.
But they were simplified, and to some extent the expense was
reduced. The effect was at once seen in an increase in the number
of private Acts and a diminution in the size of the areas which
each enclosed.

The Act of 1801 was mainly applied to commons. Open-fields
were specifically dealt with by subsequent legislation. In 1836,
an Act (6 and 7 Wm. IV. c. 115) was passed “for facilitating the
inclosure of open and arable fields.”’ It empowered two-thirds
of the possessors of open-field rights, in number and value, to
nominate commissioners and carry out enclosure ; or seven-eighths,
in number and value, to enclose without the intervention of com-
missioners. The debate in Parliament is chiefly noticeable for
the stress which, for the first time since the days of Elizabeth, was
laid on the desirability of preserving commons as breathing-places
and play-grounds. In the Bill itself the point was not really
raised. But, as the nineteenth century advanced, this aspect of
the question of enclosing commons and wastes became increas-
ingly important. It was prominent in the General Inclosure
Act of 1845 (8 and 9 Vic. c. 118). The principal change made in
this Act was the substitution of Inclosure Commissioners for the
Parliamentary Committee as a local tribunal of enquiry, before
which the necessary examination could be conducted on the spot.
But Parliamentary control was not abandoned. All the schemes
framed by the Commissioners in each given year were embodied
in a general Act, and submitted to Parliament for sanction. The
administration of the Inclosure Acts is now entrusted to the Board
of Agriculture. As a State department, the Board can deal with
open-fields and commons on broader lines than the strict inter-
pretation of the statute, which constituted their authority, allowed
to the Inclosure Commissioners.

SMALL EFFECT OF THE CORN LAWS 253

SN

CHAPTER XII.

THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS.!

Difficulty in deciding on the good or bad influence of the Corn Laws ; restric-
tions on home as well as on foreign trade in corn ; gradual abandonment of
the attempt to secure just prices by legislation ; means adopted to steady
prices; prohibition both of exports and of imports: the bounty on home-
grown corn; the system established in 1670 and 1689 lasts till 1815; its
general effect ; influence of seasons from 1689 to 1764, and from 1765 to
1815; difficulty of obtaining foreign supplies during the Napoleonic wars ;
practical monopoly in the home market: small margin of home supply
owing to growth of population ; exaggerated effect on prices of good or
bad harvests; protection after 1815; demand by agriculturists for fair
profits ; changed conditions of supply ; repeal of the Corn Laws, 1846.

MEN are apt to pass a hasty judgment on the Corn Laws in accord-
ance with their political prejudices. One party condemns them as
mischievous ; another party approves them as salutary. Neither
troubles to consider their practical effect. Yet, from 1689 to 1815,
it is probable that the marked deficiency or abundance of the
harvest in any single year produced a greater effect on prices than
was produced by the Corn Laws in the 125 years of-their existence.as
a complete system.

It is almost impossible to decide whether the total effect of the
Corn Laws has been to promote or to retard agricultural progress.
Probably the balance of their influence in either direction would
be found to be inconsiderable. The utmost nicety of calculation
would be required in order to measure with any degree of accuracy
the extent to which, before 1815, they affected prices of corn.
Before the balance can be correctly struck, the advance in price,
which was due to the increased demand consequent on the growth
of population and to the gradual depreciation of gold and silver,
must be discounted ; the fall in price, which resulted from economy
in the cost and increase in the yield of production, must be

1 See Appendix ITI.

254 THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS

eliminated ; an explanation must be offered of the facts that in
England, during the seventeenth century, wheat averaged only a
halfpenny the bushel cheaper than during the eighteenth century,
and that the general prices of Europe, under different fiscal systems,
did not, during the period, materially differ from those of England.
Still more difficult would it be to determine whether, taken as a
whole and over the entire period of their existence, they have
benefited or injured consumers, so far as these can be distinguished
from producers. If they aggravated evils in some directions,
they compensated them in others. Whatever else the legislation
effected, it did, except during the last few years.of.its_operation,
steady prices, and to consumers steadiness was perhaps as great
a boon as a spasmodic cheapness which alternated with excessive
dearness.. At a time when England was practically dependent on
home-grown supplies, prices of corn were extravagantly sensitive
to fluctuations in the yield of harvests. The reason is obvious.
Average harvests provided bread enough for the population ; but
there was often little margin to spare. A partial failure, therefore,
meant the prospect of dearth, if not of famine. In prolonged periods
of scarcity, like that of the Napoleonic wars, our ancestors might
pass self-denying ordinances to reduce their domestic consumption
by one-third, dispense with flour for their own wigs or the hair of
their lackeys, substitute clay imitations for the pastry of their
pies, forbid the sale of bread till it was twenty-four hours old, pro-
hibit the use of corn in the making of starch or in distilleries. Yet,
in the case of a necessary like corn, it was impossible to exercise
such economies as would make good any considerable shortage.
Hence corn, when a deficient harvest was anticipated, was specially
liable to panic-stricken competition. Any falling off in the annual
yield caused a far greater advance in_price than was justified_by
the actual shortage. Somewhat similar, though less exaggerated;
was the effect of an anticipated abundance... The fall in price was
wholly disproportionate to the real surplus. These violent alterna-_
tions between dearness and cheapness, if they had not. been-steadied.
and regulated by the legislature, would have been disastreus—to
both consumers and producers.
Beginning in the early Middle Ages, and ending in 1869, the

English Corn Laws lasted for upwards of six centuries. Attention

1 Seventeenth century, 38s. 2d. the quarter; eighteenth century, 38s. 7d.
the quarter (Arthur Young’s Progressive Value of Money, p. 76).

RESTRICTIONS ON EXPORTS AND IMPORTS 255

SS
has been so exclusively concentrated on one side only of their pro-

visions, that the regulation of the inland trade in corn and the
restrictions on its exportation have been long forgotten. Yet,
except during the period 1815-46, the duties.on-foreign-grain, which
are _now regarded as the principal.feature of the old.Corn Laws,
were of minor. importance....The successive Governments which
framed and revised the legislation on corn were not more enlightened
than their contemporaries, for whose direction the regulations were
passed; the ultimate effect of their measures was sometimes
miscalculated ; their policy varied from time to time; different
objects were prominent at different periods. But it is impossible
to pass any summary sentence of condemnation on the Corn Laws
as a system selfishly designed to enrich, at the expense of consumers,
a ruling class of landowning aristocrats. On the contrary, if the
legislation is treated as a whole, and the restrictions on both exports
and imports are €xamined together, it will be found that, up to
1815, the-interests alike of consumers,.producers, and the nation
were collectively and continuously considered. The general aim
of legislators was to maintain an. abundant. supply.of food at fair
and steady prices ; to assist the agricultural industry in which, up
to the middle of the eighteenth century, the great mass of the people
were engaged as producers ; to prevent the depopulation of rural
districts, build up the commercial and maritime power of the nation,
make it independent of foreign food supplies, and foster the growth
oi the infant colonies.

Mediaeval C Corn Laws were based on principles _of morality, if
not. of religion. They were akin to the laws against usury. It
was considered imnroral to prey. on human.needs, or to take
advantage of scarcity by exacting more than a moderate profit on,
the production.of necessaries of life. The object of legislation was,
therefore, to establish.‘‘ just.” prices, and in the interest of con-
sumers to restrict. the liberty of sellers. The idea that British corn
might be cheapened by bringing the granaries of Europe into
competition with home supplies had either not suggested itself, ‘or
been rejected as impracticable. In order to establish just prices,
the methods of early legislators were various. They endeavoured
to attain their end, and, incidentally, to secure better profits to
producers, by keeping home-grown corn in the country, by regulating
the inland trade, by penalising the intervention of middlemen
between farmers and their customers, by protecting buyers against

256 THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS

\ the craft of bakers, by preventing monopolies and speculations in
_ grain which, in days when difficulties of transport restricted com-

petition to narrow areas fed by local supplies, were a real danger.

_ To this class of laws belong prohibitions against selling corn out

of the country, or transporting it from one district to another ;
statutes } against corn-dealers who “ forestalled,” “* engrossed,” or
“ regrated ” grain; and the Assizes of Bread,? which, down to the
reign of George II., regulated the actual size of the loaf by the
price of corn, instead of proportioning its cost to that of its material.
Eventually this class of legislation defeated its own object.
It hampered the natural trade in corn, locked up the capital of
farmers, and so tended to reduce the area under the plough. But
the national dread of corn speculation, of which many laws were
the expression, was only paralleled by the national horror of witch-
craft, and lasted longer among educated classes. As facilities for

internal transport increased, opportunities for local monopolies

diminished. Successive steps were taken towards freedom of
inland trade. Thus in 1571 corn was permitted to be transported
from one district to another on payment of a licence duty of Is.

\a quarter ; in 1663 liberty to buy corn in order to sell it again was
conceded, when it was below a certain limit, provided that it was

not resold for three months in the same market; in 1772 the
statutory penalties against corn-dealers were repealed as tending
to “‘ discourage the growth and enhance the price” of corn; in
1822 the practice of setting out Assizes of Bread was by Act of
Parliament discontinued in London ; in 1836 an Act, similar in terms

| to that of London, abolished Assizes in provincial towns and country

districts. Instead of attempting to secure just prices by multiplying
laws in restraint of speculation, or by regulating the cost of corn
and bread, the modern tendency has been to enforce honest dealing

by increasing the protection of consumers against false weights and

adulteration.

Other means were adopted to maintain steady prices in the
interest of consumers and, indirectly, of producers. Thus the
erection of public granaries, in which farmers might store the
surplus of one year against the shortage of the next, was borrowed
from Holland, and urged on the country by royal proclamation.

1#.g. 5 and 6 Edward VI. ec. 14 (1552); 15 Car. II. ce. 7 (1663); 12 Geo.
PTT. ce. 71)(1772).

* See Appendix III. C.

PARLIAMENTARY CONTROL OF TAXATION 257

SS

In 1620 the King’s Council “ wrote letters into every shire and
some say to every market-town, to provide a granary or store-
house, with stock to buy corn, and keep it for a dear year.” A
similar object inspired the subsequent institution of bonded ware-
houses under the King’s lock (1663), in which foreign grain might
be stored, free of duty, until withdrawn for consumption. Restric-
tions on the exportation of home-grown corn were governed by the
same desire to prevent excesses in surplus or deficiency, and to save
the country from violent oscillations between cheapness and dear-
ness. The much debated bounty on exports of grain was designed
to produce the same result. Even the regulation of imports of
foreign corn was partly governed by the same desire to secure a
steady level of price.

At an early date prohibitions against exporting corn were influ-
enced by political motives of retaliation on the king’s enemies, just as
the corresponding permission was affected by considerations of the
needs of the public treasury. Revenue, though never the first aim
of the Corn Laws, was, in mediaeval times and again under the
Stewarts, a secondary object. To this extent the special interests,
not only of consumers and producers, but also of the nation, were
thus early brought into play. Originally, corn was only exported
by those who had obtained, and in most cases bought, the king’s
licence. But the exercise of the royal prerogative in the grant of
licences provoked a constitutional struggle, which for three cen-
turies was fought with varying fortunes. The principle at stake
was the control of Parliament over all taxation. In 1393 freedom
of export was allowed by statute ; but the statutory liberty might
be overridden by the king in Council. Seventy years later (1463)
the royal power to prohibit or permit exportation was taken away,
and, instead of the sovereign’s discretion, a scale of prices was
fixed below which trade in corn was allowed. More despotic than
their immediate predecessors, the Tudor sovereigns reasserted the
royal right to grant licences! Special circumstances may have
justified the claim and its exercise. Agriculturally, the general
aim of the Tudors was to encourage tillage in order to counteract
the depopulating tendencies of sheep-farming. Commercially, they
desired to build up a foreign trade as the chief support of sea power,
and English corn was one of the commodities which they hoped

1#.g. 25 Henry VIII. c. 2 (1533); 1 and 2 P. and M. c. 5 (1554). See

Appendix ITI., B.
R

258 THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS

to exchange for foreign produce.1_ On both grounds they fostered
a trade in exported grain. But uncontrolled liberty of sending
corn out of the country might have raised home prices by depleting
home supplies. It may therefore have seemed essential to Tudor
statesmen that the royal power of prohibiting exports should be
revived in the interest of consumers. The emptiness of the royal
treasury drove the Stewarts to seek in this control of the corn-
trade an independent source of income, and it was one of the
complaints against Charles I. that he had exercised the royal pre-
rogative in order to swell his revenue. Ultimately the constitu-
tional principle triumphed. From the Restoration down to 1815
freedom to export home-grown corn was controlled and regulated
by the legislature in accordance with scales of prices current in the
home market. At the same time the power of the king in Council
to suspend the laws regulating both exports and imports of grain
was retained in use and sanctioned by Parliament.

At the Restoration the fiscal policy of the country towards
corn assumed a more definite shape. Statutes were passed in 1660,
1663, and 1670, which regulated both exports and imports of corn.
The two sets of regulations cannot henceforward be considered
separately. The one was the complement of the other. The Act
of 1660? allowed home-grown corn to be exported when prices at
the port of shipment did not exceed, for wheat, 40s. per quarter ;,
for rye, peas, and beans, 24s.; for barley and malt, 20s. ; for oats,
16s. The same Act levied a duty of 2s. a quarter on imports of
foreign wheat, when home prices were at or under 44s. a quarter :
above that price, the duty was reduced to 4d. Proportionate
duties were imposed on other foreign grains according to their
prices in the home market. These scales of duties and prices were
revised in the Act of 16633 In the Acts both of 1660 and 1663 the
object of the Government seems to have been revenue, for the
scales of duties on foreign imports are remarkably low. In 1670,
however, this policy was changed. In this Act “ for the Improve-
ment of Tillage’ * corn might be exported, though the home prices
rose above the limit fixed in 1663. At the same time prohibitive
duties were levied on imports of foreign corn. When wheat, for

1 An Act for the Maintenance of the Navy passed in 1562 (5 Eliz. ec. 5), per-
mitted the export of corn when the price of wheat was at or under 10s. per
quarter ; of rye, beans, and peas, 8s.; of barley, 6s. 8d. See also Appendix
IIT., B.

212 Car: IT. ce: 4. stp Caryl, cs vi 422 Car. II. ce: 13.

BOUNTY ON EXPORTS OF CORN, 259

instance, stood at under 53s. 4d. a quarter, a duty of 16s. a quarter
was imposed on foreign corn; when the home price was between
53s. 4d. and 80s., the duty was reduced to 8s.; when prices rose
above 80s., the ordinary poundage of 4d. a quarter only was charge-
able. On other foreign grains, at proportionate prices, similar
duties were levied.

In the reign of William and Mary ! an addition was made to the
system. When the home price of wheat was at, or under, 48s. a
quarter, a bounty of 5s. a quarter was allowed on every quarter of
home-grown wheat exported. Similar bounties were allowed on
the export of other grains at proportionate prices. In the Parlia-
mentary debates on this measure the interests both of consumers
and producers were avowedly considered. On-—the—one~side; the
Act was unquestionably framed for the benefit of producers, to
relieve them of accumulated stock, and so to enable them to bear
increased public burdens.._On the other side, it was expected that
the stimulus of the bounty would promote production, bring a
larger area_of land under the plough, increase the quantity of
home-grown grain, and so provide a more constant supply of corn
at.steady prices anda lower average. For the first sixty-five years
of the eighteenth century results seemed to justify the argument.
But it is difficult to determine how far the low range of prices which
prevailed from 1715 to 1765 was due to prosperous seasons, or how
far it was the effect of the stimulus to employ improved methods
on an increased area of land. In years of scarcity, the direct effect
of the bounty was inconsiderable, because not only was that
encouragement withdrawn, but the liberty to export any home-
grown corn was also suspended. In years of abundance, the
bounty, by stimulating exportation, may have checked the natural
fall of prices. But it was urged that this advantage to producers
was a reasonable compensation for the loss they sustained in years
of scarcity from the frequent prohibitions of exports ; that prices
were steadied ; that no violent fall drove parts of the corn-area
out of cultivation; that the home-supply, on which alone the
country could depend, was therefore more abundant than it other-
wise would have been ; that, as the bounty was paid without regard
to the quality of the exported grain, English consumers benefited
by the retention of the superior qualities for home consumption.
Possibly consumers may have found that these advantages counter-

1] W. and M. ec. 12.

260 THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS

balanced the loss sustained in years of abundance by the inter-
ference with natural cheapness, and were a set off to the loss
of the six million pounds,! which, between 1697 and _ 1765,
were raised by taxation, and in the shape of bounties paid over to
producers.

The fiscal policy on which the Government embarked in 1689
practically governed the corn trade down to 1815. Scales of regu-
lating prices were often revised ; but the principles remained the
~ same. On one side, the import of foreign corn was in ordinary
years practically prohibited by heavy duties. On the other side,
home production was artificially stimulated in order that a larger
area might be maintained under corn cultivation than was required
_in average seasons for the maintenance of the population. In the
125 years during which this system prevailed, two periods may be
distinguished ; the first lasting from 1689 to 1765, the second
extending from 1765 to 1815.

In considering the results of the fiscal policy of the Government
during the first of these two periods, it must be remembered that
both sets of laws were in operation at the same time. When prices
were below a certain level, foreign imports were practically pro-
hibited, exports of home-grown corn permitted, and the quantity of
production stimulated by bounties. When home prices rose above
a certain level, the bounties ceased, exports were prohibited, and —
imports of foreign grain admitted duty free or at reduced rates.
It is, therefore, not easy to decide, whether consumers gained most
by the laws which kept corn in the country, or lost most by those
which kept it out. In the twentieth century, when there is a large
additional or alternative supply of grain, produced under different
climatic conditions to our own, there could be no question that the
loss inflicted by the prohibition of imports would be incomparably
the greatest. But the conditions of the corn-markets of the world
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were so widely different,
that the policy of the Government may not then have been unreason-
able. Additional supplies were only obtainable from Northern
Europe. But the north of France, the Netherlands, Denmark,
North-west Germany, and, to a less extent, North-east Germany and
Poland, were affected by similar climatic conditions to those of
England. Thus in unfavourable seasons the whole corn-area then

1 See Appendix III., E. for the bounties paid in the years 1697-1765 on exports
of grain under the Act of 1 William and Mary, ec. 12.

THEIR FREQUENT SUSPENSION _ 261

available suffered simultaneously from deficient harvests. Through-
out the period 1689-1765 the average price of wheat in England is
stated to have been less by 4d. a quarter than the average price in
Continental markets. Foreign corn, therefore, after bearing the
cost of transport and insurance, seldom less than 12s. a quarter and
often increased by war-risks, could not have reduced English prices,
even if no import duties had been levied. Consumers were not shut
out from an alternative and cheaper supply, because no other supply
was available except at higher prices than were being paid for home-
grown grain. On the other hand, they profited considerably by the
results of the fiscal policy pursued in England. In average seasons
England grew not only corn for her own people, but a surplus for
exportation. It was only in adverse seasons that any deficiency was
probable. When this was anticipated, the Government had two
strings to its bow. The ports were closed against exports, and, if
the supply continued inadequate, were opened to imports. It
seemed probable, therefore, that consumers suffered no injury from
the heavy duty on imports, or that, if they were injured at all,
their loss was infinitesimal.

During the period 1689-1765, neither the bounties, nor the
liberty of exportation, nor the restriction on imports, were continu-
ously operative. In nine years! the bounty was suspended, or the
exportation of home-grown corn altogether prohibited. Generally
this expedient succeeded ; the unusual quantity of corn retained in
the country met the deficiency. But in three years? out of the
nine the further step was taken. In 1741, and both in 1757 and 1758
foreign corn was admitted duty free. The total amount of wheat
imported into the country in those three years was 169,455 quarters.
Tn these exceptional years, war and war-taxes, the restoration of the
currency, or the gradual growth of the population may have specially
affected English prices, and the bounty may, as its opponents
asserted, have assisted their upward tendency. But all these causes
in combination were comparatively unimportant. Throughout
European markets the dearth or the abundance of grain, together
with high or low prices, mainly depended on the weather, which
generally affected the whole corn-area in the same way. The last
seven years of the seventeenth century, for instance, were long
remembered in Scotland as the “ seven ill years,’ and in England

11698, 1699, 1700, 1709, 1710, 1741, 1757, 1758, 1759.
2 In Scotland only.

be)

262 THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS

they were almost equally disastrous. The winters of 1708-9 and
1739-40 were two of the three winters! which were famous in the
eighteenth century for their prolonged severity. Both were followed
by deficient harvests. The wet spring, summer, and autumn of
1756 produced a scarcity of corn, and the great heat of 1757 caused
the crops to be too light to make good the previous shortage.
These unfavourable seasons were not peculiar to England. They
prevailed throughout Northern Europe, and the advance of prices
was general. But in France, where the Government discouraged
exports of grain and encouraged imports, the distress was acuter and
more lasting than in England, where the opposite fiscal policy was
adopted. England, in other words, profited in these years of
scarcity by the large reserve which the bounty helped to maintain.

With the exception of the years in which these deficient harvests
occurred, the period was generally prosperous for the labouring
classes in England. The level of prices was low and steady. As
compared with the average price of wheat in the seventeenth
century, the first sixty-five years of the eighteenth century show a
fall of 16 per cent., and this relative cheapness was accompanied by
a rise of the same percentage in the wages of agricultural labour.
It seems probable that the reign of George II. was the nearest
approach to the Golden Age of the labourimg classes. Necessaries
of life were cheap and abundant; population showed no rapid
increase, but the standard of living improved. Complaints of the
low prices? were loud. It was said that farmers could not pay their
rents and landowners could “ scarce support their families.” The
low range of prices quoted by Eden ® for the years 1742-1756 is
remarkable for a country which was entirely dependent upon home
supplies, was a considerable exporter of grain, and in nine out of
the fifteen years was engaged in war at home or abroad.

A succession of prices so low as those shown in the Table
on page 263 would naturally have driven a considerable area
out of cultivation for corn, and an advance of price would
have been caused by a diminution of the supply. The practical
effect of the bounty seems to have been that this natural
result was to some degree counteracted, though throughout the

1 The third winter was 1794-5.

2See The Landlord’s Companion, by W. Allen (1736); Considerations on
the Present State of Affairs, by Lord Lyttelton (1739).

3 History of the Labouring Classes, Appendix, p. Ixxx.

BEFORE AND AFTER 1765 ot 263

century a large area of corn-land was being converted to pasture.
Thus a surplus was provided which, in years of European scarcity,
mitigated the dearth at home. During the whole period from 1715
to 1765 the total imports of foreign corn did not exceed 300,000
quarters, while home-grown corn was sent out of the country to the
amount of 114 millions. The largest amount of wheat exported in
any single year was reached in 1750, when the quantity was 950,483
quarters.

January Prices of Grain at Mark Lane and Bear Quay.

YEARS. WHEAT. BARLEY. OATS.

8. 8. 8. 3. I
1742 26 to 29 15 to 20 12 to 15
1743 20 ,, 23 15 ,, 20 13.2), 16
1744 19-7 21 1h 13 oh
1745 18 ,, 20 1c ola 12. 16
1746 16 ,, 24 10; ae Toe
1747 27... 30 So tay ahs OG 9
1748 260-28 13) 044 eae I
1749 ee Be hil, 1S 14... 16
Raa 2ante DON 1A AT) eo oe A:
1751 DAG OF AA eg PA
1752 33 ,, 34 17), 19° | °32/6.,. 16
1753 29 ,, 33 LZ pS LO/Gr,. 12
1754 27 ,, 33 Vi, 1Oe eto /6.,,° 13
1755 24 ,, 26 125. 14 10°, 13
1756 2B ods 14 ,, 15 12,3 13/6

During the second period (1765-1815) the Government maintained
the same fiscal policy of regulating both exports and imports, and
of encouraging exportation by means of bounties within a certain
range of prices. But in all other respects the two periods are
sharply contrasted. The first period was remarkable for low
prices, a large export trade in home-grown corn, and the prosperity
of the labouring classes ; the second period is equally remarkable,
for high prices, a growing importation of foreign corn, and wide- |
spread misery among the wage-earning population. When the |

See Appendix III., D.

264 THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS

fiscal system was practically unaltered, to what causes must these
differences be attributed ?

The average price of wheat during the half century which ended
in 1764, was in the next fifty years practically trebled. The tendency
is shown in the following decennial averages of the prices of wheat
\ per quarter :

1765-74 - - - - - 5ls.
1775-84 - - . - - 43s.
1785-94 - - - - - 47s.
1795-1804 - - - - 75s.
PS05-1 hy : - . - 93s.
1815-24 - - - - - 68s.

It was now that England ceased to be a corn-exporting country and
became a buyer of foreign grain. The year 1765 marks the first
stage in this revolution in the English corn-trade. For some few
years the balance hovered from side to side, inclining to excess now
of exports, now of imports. After 1792 it definitely turned in favour
of imports, which from that date increasingly preponderated.
During the whole period which witnessed this change, the fiscal
policy, though often revised, and notably in 1773 and 1791, remained
in principle the same. But from 1765 to 1774, and again from 1792
to 1814, the liberty to export corn, as well as the bounty which
encouraged exportation, was almost continuously suspended.
Imports of foreign corn were also repeatedly admitted at reduced
rates or duty free. This was the case in 1765, 1766-8, 1772-3, in
1783, in 1790, and practically from the commencement of the French
war (1793) till its final close. Besides the frequent revisions and
suspensions of the regulating prices, great efforts were made to
increase home and foreign supplies. Thus in 1772 the inland trade
was relieved from many restrictions by the repeal of the statutory
penalties against “ badgers, forestallers, engrossers, and regrators.”
To increase the area under corn, numerous enclosure Acts! were
passed. To eke out the home produce, economies were enforced
by Parliament. Thus the hair-powder tax was imposed in 1795,
and the use of wheat and other grain in the making of starch or in
distilleries was repeatedly prohibited? Still more exceptional
efforts were made to secure a supply of foreign corn. Government
agents were employed to buy corn in the Baltic, as it was feared

11,593 Acts were passed between 1795 and 1812 inclusive.
2 H.g. in 1795-6, 1800, 1801, 1809-12.

THE HIGH PRICES OF 1765-1815_ 265

that private merchants would hesitate to pay the high prices which
were demanded abroad. Corn in neutral ships, destined for foreign
ports, was seized and carried to England. Bounties on imports of
grain which had been offered in 1773 at the rate of 4s. a quarter by
the City of London, were offered by the Government at the rate of
from 16s. to 20s. a quarter in 1795-6 and again in 1800 and the years
that followed. Substitutes for ordinary corn, such as rice and maize,
were eagerly bought: the cultivation of the potato was greatly
increased. But in spite of all these efforts to provide food, the |
searcity continued until there seemed to be a real prospect of a
failure in the supply of provisions. In 1812 the country stood on)
the very verge of famine. Shut out from Continental ports, at war
not only with Napoleon but with America, England was reduced to|
acute and extreme distress. Conditions were at their worst. In)
August of that year the average price of wheat at Mark Lane was’
155s. per quarter ; prices of other grains, as well as of meat, rose in |
proportion ; at the end of October the potato crop was found to have |
failed by one-fourth. The year was one of the most severe suffering.
But 1813 brought relief. An abundant harvest lowered prices with |
extraordinary rapidity. In December wheat had fallen to 73s. 6d.
In 1814! the fiscal system which had lasted, though with many
interruptions, since 1689, was finally abolished. After June of that |
year corn, grain, meal, and flour were allowed to be exported without
payment of duty and without receiving any bounty. Henceforward
the Corn Laws only survived in the one-sided form of restrictions on |
imports. 11

The high prices which prevailed in the second period (1765-1815)
have been explained in various ways. They have been attributed
to the improper practices of corn-dealers, the growth of population,
the consolidation of holdings and diminution of open-field farming,
the depreciation of the currency, unfavourable seasons, the war, or
the fiscal system. Each of these causes may have contributed to
the upward tendency of prices. But the most effective reasons
for the dearness of corn were the ww eather-and-the-war. These two
causes alone would sufficiently explain the continued scarcity.
Even under a system of absolute free trade, they would produce the
same results to-day, if England still drew her supplementary supplies
of corn from the same limited area at home and abroad.

The growth of the population is undoubtedly an important factor

1 §4 Geo. IIT. c. 69.

266 THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS

in the problem. Between 1689 and 1815 the increase was consider-
able, though, like most of the political arithmetic which relates to
the eighteenth century, the actual numbers are largely a matter of
guess-work. In 1696 Gregory King estimated the population of
England and Wales at 5,500,000. At the accession of George IIT.
(1760), the numbers were supposed to have risen to between six and
seven millions.1 As the reign advanced, the rate of increase was
accelerated. The first official census was taken in 1801. In that
year the population of England and Wales is stated to be 8,872,980.
In 1811 it had grown to 10,150,615. On these figures the population
had doubled itself in 125 years, and, even if no allowance is made for
an improved standard of living, it is probable that England during
the same period had doubled her production of food. The increased
supply required to feed double the numbers was certainly not ob-
tained from abroad, for food imports, even at their highest, continued
to be infinitesimal in amount.2 It was therefore produced at home.

In the case of wheat it would be difficult to prove the same rate
of progress. In abundant seasons the home supply would probably
have continued to feed the country, without risk of inadequacy or
panic-stricken competition, and therefore cheaply. But in ordinary
seasons the margin was at best a small one, and in unfavourable
weather a deficit was certain. It has been disputed whether six
bushels or eight bushels of wheat should be allowed as the average
quantity yearly consumed by each person. At the higher rate of
consumption, and assuming that wheat was the food of the whole
population, seven million quarters of wheat would be required in
1760, and ten million quarters in 1811. Arthur Young, in 1771,
calculated that 2,795,808 acres were then under cultivation for
wheat in England and Wales, and that the average produce per acre
was three quarters, giving a total yield of 8,387,424 quarters. In
1808, Comber ® estimated the wheat area of England and Wales at

1 §mith (Tracts on the Corn Trade) estimates the population of England and
Wales in 1766 at six millions, of whom 3,750,000 consumed wheat, the remain-
ing 2,250,000 consuming rye, barley, or oats. Finlaison, of the National Debt
Office (M‘Culloch’s Statistical Account of the British Empire, vol. i. 399),
calculated the numbers in 1760 at 6,479,730. Porter (Progress of the Nation,
p. 146) gives the population in 1760-69 as 6,850,000. Nicholls (Hist. of the
English Poor Law, ed. 1904, vol. ii. p. 54) estimates it in 1760 as 7,000,000.

2 From 1801 to 1810 the average amount of wheat annually imported was
600,946 quarters, or about 2 pecks per head ; from 1811 to 1820 it was only
458,578 quarters.

3 An Inquiry into the State of National Subsistence, Appendix xxv.

UNPROSPEROUS SEASONS ~— 267

3,160,000 acres, and the produce, adopting Young’s average rate,
would be 9,480,000 quarters. In other words, while the population
had increased by three millions, the wheat production had increased
by only one million quarters. This calculation, however, allows
nothing for the increased productiveness of the soil under improved
management, does not take into account the surplus wheat obtain-
able from Scotland and Ireland, and is at first sight contradicted by
the large acreage which enclosures had added to the cultivated area.
Evidence indeed exists to prove that the first effect of enclosures
of open-field farms was often to diminish the corn area. Against
this decrease must be set the quantity of land which, under the spur
of the high prices of the Napoleonic war, were brought under the
plough and tilled for corn. Comber’s calculation of the wheat area
appears to be extremely low; but it is impossible to prove the
suspected under-estimate. It is probably safe to say that, while in
an average season enough wheat was grown in England and Wales
to feed ten million people, the surplus was-so small as.to.expose the
country to panic.prices whenever a deficiency in the normal yield
was. anticipated.

This conclusion is confirmed by a closer examination of the yield
of corn harvests during the period. The seasons from 1765 to 1815
were far less favourable than those from 1715 to 1764; the former
were as uniformly prosperous as the latter were uniformly adverse.
Both in this country, and throughout Europe, the harvests of
1765-67, 1770-74, fell much below the average. Prices rose high.
Exports dwindled, and imports increased in volume.t In the
decennial period 1765-1774, for the first time in the history of
English farming, imports of foreign wheat exceeded the home-
grown exports. Since that period they have never lost their pre-
ponderance. For the next eighteen years (1775-1792) the seasons
were irregular. Thus the harvest of 1779 was long famous for its
productiveness. On the other hand, the years 1782-3-4 were most
unfavourable, the winters unusually severe, and the spring and
summer cold and ungenial. There was a general scarcity of food.
In 1782 the imports of wheat (584,183 quarters) were the largest
yet known, and the figure was only once (1796: 879,200 quarters)

1 1765-74, Exports (in round numbers) 510,000 quarters ; imports, 1,341,000,
1775-84, exports, 1,366,100 ; imports, 1,972,000. 1785-94, exports, 1,305,385 ;
imports, 2,015,000. 1795-1804, exports, 536,000; imports, 6,686,000. 1805-

14, exports, 593,000 (nine years only, the records of 1813 having been
destroyed) ; imports, 5,782,000.

268 THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS

exceeded in the eighteenth century. Writing in August, 1786,
Arthur Young says: “ Last winter, hay, straw, and fodder of all
kinds were scarcer and dearer than ever known in this Kingdom.
Severe frosts destroyed the turnips, and cattle of all kinds, and sheep
suffered dreadfully ; many died, and the rest were in ill plight to
fatten early in this summer.” The crops of 1789 again were
deficient. Exports were prohibited, and free imports permitted.
But in France the scarcity almost amounted to famine. The
Government spent large sums in the purchase of wheat, and Con-
tinental prices ruled considerably above those of England. Against
the deficient harvests of 1790 and 1792 may be set the season of
1791, which was so favourable that, for the last time in the history of
the corn-trade,! the exports of the following year exceeded the
imports.

It will be seen that the yield of fourteen of the harvests during
the twenty-eight years 1765-92 fell so far below the average as to
create a scarcity ; that several others were defective; and that
only two (1779 and 1791) were really abundant. Yet, during the
whole period, the total excess of imports of foreign wheat over the
exports of home-grown produce only amounted to 1,661,000 quarters,
or an average of little more than 59,000 quarters a year. It may,
therefore, be reasonably assumed that, if England had enjoyed
seasons as uniformly favourable as those of 1715-64, she would have
been able to feed her growing population at low prices and yet to
remain a grain-exporting country. The fact is a striking proof of
her agricultural progress. It is more than doubtful whether such
an expansion of her powers of production would have been possible
if the open-field system of farming had been maintained.

In February, 1793, war was proclaimed with France. It continued
with two brief intervals till 1815. As the struggle progressed the
area of conflict was widened until it embraced America as well as
Europe, and not only became a naval and military war in which all
_ the Powers were engaged, but developed into a commercial blockade
- directed against this country. During the whole period the Corn
Laws were practically inoperative. The progress of the war
created conditions of supply which alone would suffice to explain
an unprecedented rise of prices. But the situation was through-

11792, exports, 300,278 quarters ; imports, 22,417. The statement in the
text is not literally true. In 1808 the exports exceeded the imports by 13,116
quarters (98,005 to 84,889). But the exportation was to the Peninsula for
military purposes and for the supply of our own troops.

A CHRONIC CONDITION OF PANIC 269

out aggravated by an unusual recurrence of unproductive
seasons.

The wheat harvests in the twenty-two years 1793-1814! may be
thus analysed. Fourteen were deficient; in seven out of the
fourteen, the crops failed to a remarkable extent, namely, in 1795,
1799, 1800, 1809, 1810, 1811, 1812. Six produced an average yield.
Only two, 1796 and 1813, were abundant ; but the latter was long
regarded as the best within living memory. Towards the close of the
period, the increased extent of the wheat area to some degree com-
pensated for the comparative failure of the crops. But the repeated
deficiencies created an almost continuous apprehension of real
scarcity which was expressed in abnormal prices. To a generation
which draws its supplies from sources so remote that climatic con-
ditions vary almost infinitely, the panic may seem unintelligible.
It was not so in the days of the Napoleonic wars. The quantity
available from the United States was scanty, and over the corn
areas of Europe a similar series of unproductive seasons seems to
have prevailed. To this, however, there was one notable exception.
The harvests of 1808 and 1809 were remarkably favourable in
France and the Netherlands, and, at the very height of the struggle
with Napoleon, it was from the French cornfields that England
obtained her additional supplies.

The deficiency of the home harvests and the consequent fear of
scarcity naturally raised prices of corn. The upward tendency was
in various ways enormously increased by the progress of the war
and the commercial blockade which it developed. No doubt the
struggle in which the country-was engaged quickened the activity
andindustry of the population, stimulated agricultural improve-
ments, sharpened the inventive faculties to economise both in
money and in labour. On the other hand, the war-raised the rate
of interest, added to the burden of taxation, increased the cost of
corn-growing, and withdrew into unproductive channels a con-
siderable portion of the capital and labour of the country. Besides
these ordinary results, the peculiar character which the struggle
gradually assumed threatened to deprive England of any alternative
supply of foreign grain which could supplement the resources that
she derived from her own soil, from Scotland, and from Ireland.
Again and again the political situation was reflected in Mark Lane.

1 Tooke’s History of Prices, ed. 1857, Appendix vi. ‘“‘ Seasons 1792-1856 ”
vol, vi. pp. 471-83, and vol. i. pp. 213-376, and vol. ii. pp. 1-3.

270 THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS

Thus, in 1800, it was not merely the prospect or subsequent certainty
of an unproductive harvest which raised prices, for the actual
deficiency had been greater in 1794-5. It_was the further dread of
being cut.off from foreign supplies. It was the hostility of Russia
and Denmark, thé consequent-fear that the Baltic would be closed
against our grain-ships, and the almost simultaneous news that
Prussia had imposed a heavy duty on all grain exports, which com-
bined to send wheat to 130s. a quarter. At a later stage in the
struggle, the deficiency in our home supply was less in 1811-12 than
it had been in 1794-5 or in 1799-1800. But it was the threat of a
complete stoppage of all foreign supplies by the Berlin and Milan
decrees, which turned the dread of scarcity into a panic-stricken
competition and carried the price of wheat in 1812 to 155s. a quarter.
Even if the war never actually effected a commercial blockade, its
risks, together with the restrictions on exports enforced by foreign
Powers and the licences for navigation required by the British
Government, forced up the rates of freight and insurance to a
prodigious height. During the period 1810-12, this increase in
the costs of conveyance culminated, and the charges for the trans-
_ port of foreign corn rose to as much as 50s. a quarter. Thus, even
if it was possible to obtain additional supplies from abroad, they
could only be brought into the country at an unprecedented expense.

The history of the Corn Laws, thus briefly outlined, confirms the
impression that, down to 1815, they exercised little or no influence
on prices. If that is so, they were not the cause of the great rise of
rents which the last quarter of a century had witnessed. Hitherto
the only practical effect of the restrictions on imports had been to
prevent corn from being brought into the country for the purpose
of gaining the bounty on exportation. In ordinary years, no foreign
corn could have been imported, even duty free, at prices which
could reduce, or compete with, home-grown produce. In years
of scarcity, the deficiency generally extended over Europe, and
foreign supplies were either not obtainable, or obtainable only at
prices at least as high as our own. During the frequent periods of
war, these conditions were aggravated by the prodigious cost of
transport. Great Britain had in the main fed her own population,
and her prices had depended on the seasons. Consumers had not
suffered from the Corn Laws, because no alternative cheaper supply
was available from abroad.

After 1815 these conditions-were-to a great extent altered. The

CHANGED CONDITIONS PAFTER 1815 271

bounty_on exportation had been abolished. Freedom of export
was allowed, and was never ‘suspended, because there was no margin
of produce which could” be retained in the country by prohibiting
it_from being sent abroad. Population was beginning to equal
production». So long as there had been a surplus of home-grown
grain, which could be kept in the country by suspending the licence
to export, the Corn Laws had steadied prices. Now, in times of
scarcity, they only increased the range of fluctuation in rise and
fall by excluding alternative supplies: Revenue was not their
object, because the duties were so high as to be prohibitory. They
were frankly protective, intended to shut out imports, and so
maintain the prices of home-grown produce..above a permanent
level. Even so, the interests of consumers would not necessarily
have been sacrificed to those of producers, unless an additional
and cheaper supply.had been obtainable. That condition was
now, in most years, fulfilled. The charges of transport had fallen
to their peace level; throughout Northern Europe corn was once
more sown and reaped without fear of the ravages of war, and
Continental prices ruled below those of Great Britain: from the
New World came an increasing supply, which was not affected by
the same climatic conditions as those of the North of Europe.
Henceforth-external sources existed, from which deficiencies in
the yield of home harvests might be supplied without raising prices
beyond the addition of the costs of conveyance. If to these costs
were added the payment of heavy duties, it might be said that the
price of bread was artificially raised to maintain the level of the
profits of landowners and farmers.

Another important change had taken place in the position of
the antagonists in the coming struggle over the prices of corn.__ The
issue was no longer centred on principles of abstract.morality ;
it was transferred to the practical region of trade, Our ancestors
passed laws to establish just prices; their_successors legislated
to secure reasonable profits. The change may have been a change
rather of words than of ideas. But it was not without significance.
Down to the middle of the eighteenth century, the great preponder-
ance of the-nation had been interested in prices-both as consumers
and producers of corn. Now the proportions were completely
altered, and-the~majority.had permanently shifted. The new
manufacturing class was rapidly growing ; the mass s_of- open- field
farmers had become agricultural labourers, whose real wages rose

272 THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS

with the cheapness or fell with the dearness..ofbread.. On the
other hand, the interests of producers of corn were now represented
by a comparatively small and. dwindling class. of. landowners.and
farmers, who in recent years had enormously. raised.their-own
standard of living. Numerically small, but politically powerful,
this class was convinced that the war-prices yielded only reasonable.
profits. The great majority of the population..was.convinced to”
the contrary.

‘ Yet it would be unfair to represent that the protective policy of
the later Corn Laws was entirely maintained by a Parliamentary
majority swayed by selfish motives. It was supported, up to a
certain point, by many who stood outside the circle of the landed
interests, and ranked as disciples of Adam Smith. It never entered
into their calculations that Great Britain could ever become depen-
dent for its food supply on foreign countries. On the contrary, the
view was strongly held that every prosperous nation must in
ordinary seasons rely for its means of subsistence on its own resources,
and must meet the growth of numbers with a corresponding increase
in_the supply of food. This doctrine was almost universally
accepted. Porter, the author of The Progress of the Nation,’ was
an advanced Free Trader. But he argued that “every country
which makes great and rapid progress in population must make
equal progress in the production of food.” He quotes the example
of Great Britain in support of his view. By comparing the growth
of population with the increase in the quantity of imported wheat,
he shows that improvements in agriculture had, to a remarkable
extent, enabled the country to keep pace with its increasing needs.
Thus in 1811, when the population of Great Britain was ascertained
to be 11,769,725, only 600,946 were fed by foreign wheat. At the
end of the next decade, 1811-20, the population had risen to
13,494,217, and the home supply was enough for all but 458,576.
At the close of the third decade, 1821-30, the population had
grown to 15,465,474; yet only 534,992 depended on the foreign
supply. In 1841, the numbers had increased to 17,535,826; but
home-grown wheat fed all but 907,638 persons. In other words,
British wheat, in 1811, had fed a population of 11,168,779; in
1841, enough wheat was produced at home to feed a population of
16,628,188. Thus in thirty years British land had increased its pro-

1 The Progress of the Nation in its various social and economical relations from
the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, by G. R. Porter, ed. 1847, p. 136.

A PROTECTIVE POLICY ™ 273

ductiveness by 54 million quarters. Porter evidently expected
that this proportionate progress would continue. He _ himself
advocated the repeal of the Corn Laws ; but there were other Free
Traders who hesitated to go this length, for fear that improvements
should be discouraged, and that the country should mainly peat
for its bread upon foreign wheat.

Agriculturists also argued, and no doubt conscientiously Helioved
that, if corn in any quantity were brought into the country from
abroad, home-prices would cease to yield reasonable profits ; that
agricultural land would be forced out of cultivation; that rents
and wages would fall; that rural employment would diminish ;
that the virility of the nation would be impaired by the influx into
towns and the consequent depopulation of country districts. To
these arguments Parliament lent a sympathetic ear. The limit
of home-prices, at which the importation of grain was allowed at
nominal duties, was raised in the case of wheat from 48s. in 1773
to 85s. in 1815. Below those limits, duties, so heavy as to be
practically prohibitive, were levied on imported corn or on its
removal from the bonded warehouses for consumption. In 1828
the evils of this restrictive legislation, though apparently modified,
were really aggravated by the adoption of a sliding scale of duties,
which varied with the prices of home-grown grain. ‘The importa-
tion of corn became a gamble, and foreign importers combined to)
raise home-prices in order to pay the lower scale of duties. Yet in!
spite of this experience the graduated system was maintained in
the legislation of 1842 and 1845.

Meanwhile the whole protective policy, of which the Corn Laws
only formed a part, was gradually becoming discredited. In 1815
a minority of the Peers had entered a powerful protest against the
exclusion of foreign corn. In 1820 the merchants presented their
famous petition, which was drawn up by Thomas Tooke, the
author of the History of Prices. A war of pamphlets raged con-
tinuously. In the treatment of colonial produce especially, there
were signs of the abandonment of a rigidly protective policy. The
principle of colonial preference, already recognised in 1766, had
been acted upon in 1791, 1804, and 1815. Corn from British
possessions was allowed to be imported at a nominal duty at a
lower limit of home-prices than that fixed for foreign produce.
Ten years later, corn from the British possessions of North America
was permitted to enter British ports at a constant duty of 5s.

S

274 THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS

without reference to home-prices. In 1843 this principle was
carried yet further. A special concession was made to Canada.
In return for a preference granted to British trade, Canadian corn,
irrespective of home-prices, was admitted at a nominal duty of 1s.
Encouraged by these concessions, the agitation against the Corn
Laws gathered strength. It gradually extended from a demand
for the relaxation of the stringent duties to a demand for their
total abolition. For a brief period the pressure was reduced by
the favourable seasons of 1831-36. In 1835, wheat fell to 39s. 4d.,
the lowest price at which it had been sold for 54 years. Hopes
revived that the improvements in farming had again placed pro-
duction on a level with the growth of population. The Corn Laws
were for the moment forgotten. But the unfavourable cycle of
1837-41 again forced the question to the front. From 1839 onwards
the Anti-Corn-Law League used its growing influence in favour
of total repeal. The demand for cheap food grew more and more
insistent from the labouring classes. Manufacturers echoed the
cry, because cheap food meant a lower cost of production, and
because food imports would be paid for by exported manufac-
tures. Finally, the disastrous harvest of 1845 and the potato
famine compelled the Government to yield. The “rain rained
away ”’ the Corn Laws. In 1846 the existing duties were modified
according to a scale which was to continue in force till February 1,
1849. After that date all kinds of foreign corn were to be admitted
at the nominal fixed duty of Is. a quarter. That nominal duty
was finally repealed in 1869.

DIFFICULTIES OF COMMUNICA'NON 275

CHAPTER XIII.
HIGHWAYS.

THE local progress of farming, at the close of the eighteenth century,
had been great; but its general advance was still hampered by
numerous hindrances. In many parts of England the inveterate
preference for old-fashioned practices was slowly yielding to experi-
ence of the results of more modern methods. Defects in the
relations between owners and occupiers were mitigated by the
grant of leases, which secured to improving tenants a return for
their outlay of money and labour. Obstacles presented by soil
and climate, so far as they were capable of remedy, were in pro-
cess of removal. Experience had shown that sands might be
fertilised, and the acidity of sour land corrected, by the use of
the proper dressings, selected with judgment and applied with
perseverance ; that considerable tracts of moor, heath, and moss
might be brought into profitable cultivation ; that fens and swamps
might be drained ; that even the disadvantages of climate might
be ameliorated by plantations. But there remained a number
of hindrances, which originated in the laws and customs of the
country. To this class belonged difficulties of communication.
The incidence of tithe on the produce of the land will be treated in
a subsequent chapter.

A generation familiar with railways and good roads can hardly
appreciate the obstacle to progress which was created by diffi-
culties of transport and communication. Up to the middle of the
eighteenth century, rivers had exercised the greatest influence on
the development of inland trade centres. In few districts, and
only in favourable seasons, could heavy goods be conveyed over
the unmade roads. The command of water carriage was _ all-
important. On straightening, deepening, or widening rivers so as
to make them navigable, early legislators from the fifteenth century

276 HIGHWAYS

onwards, had mainly concentrated their efforts to improve internal
communications. Not only inland towns, but seaports themselves,
often owed their early prosperity to their situation at the mouths
of rivers. Bristol, or Hull, or Boston, or Lynn, for instance,
collected and distributed produce along the course of the Severn
and the Wye, or the Trent and the Idle, or the Ouse, the Welland,
and the Witham. Even London derived some of its pre-eminence
from the produce which was carried over the Thames and its
tributaries. To Liverpool the closing of the port of Chester by
the sands which choked the Dee, and the opening up of the interior
by making navigable the upper waters of the Mersey (1694), the
Trwell and the Weaver (1720), proved the real starting-point of its
trade. By means of these water-highways inland towns became
seaports. They were the centres for collecting and distributing
produce over the interior of the country. Fleets of trows, “ bil-
landers,”’ floats, lighters, and barges were engaged in the trade.
On the Severn, for instance, which was navigable as far as Welsh-
pool, 376 vessels were employed in 1756. The famous Stourbridge
Fair was supplied with heavy goods by the Ouse, which enabled
boats, each carrying 40 tons of freight, to load and unload at
Cambridge. York was accessible to vessels of from 60 to 80 tons,
and claimed rights of wreckage as a seaport. Exeter and Taunton
carried on a home and foreign trade by means of the Exe and
the Parret. Coal reached Hereford by the Wye. Coventry com-
municated with the sea by means of the Warwickshire Avon.
From Bawtry, on the Yorkshire Idle, were distributed the lead of
Derbyshire, the edged tools of Sheffield, the iron goods of Hallam-
shire, as well as the foreign goods which entered the country at
Hull. Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire shipped their barley
and malt from Ware on the Lea. Gloucestershire cheesemakers
sent their cheese to London down the Thames from Lechlade.
Burslem wares were carried in pot-waggons or on pack-horses to
Bridgnorth on the Severn.

From utilising the natural waterways of the country it seemed
but a short step to supplementing them as arteries of trade by
the construction of canals. Pioneers in the early stages of this
movement were Sir Richard Weston, who in the reign of Charles I.
canalised the Wey, and Sir William Sandys, of Ombersley in
Worcestershire, who in 1661 obtained extensive powers to cut
new channels, and build locks on the Wye and the Lugg. More

NAVIGABLE RIVERS AND CANALS 277

extensive plans were floating in the minds of Francis Mathew +
and Andrew Yarranton.2 Mathew in 1655 had laid before Cromwell
a scheme for connecting London with Bristol, by the construction
of a canal to join the Thames and the Avon. No notice seems to
have been taken of the plan. Nor was his project more successful
fifteen years later. ‘‘ Many Lords and Gentlemen,” says Yarranton,
“were ingaged in it. ... But some foolish Discourse at Coffee-
houses laid asleep that design as being a thing impossible and
impracticable.” Yarranton himself proposed to make Banbury a
great distributing centre by connecting it with the Severn and the
Thames. At an estimated cost of £10,000, he planned to make
the Cherwell navigable from Oxford to Banbury, and to cut a new
channel from the latter place to Shipton-on-the-Stour, whence
goods might be carried by the Avon into the Severn below Tewkes-
bury. Both writers insist on the extreme isolation of inland
districts, the need of supplying food to manufacturing centres,
the prohibitive cost of conveying heavy goods by land, and the
impassable nature of the roads for wheeled traffic.

In canal construction England lagged far behind foreign countries,
though useful work continued to be done in making existing rivers
navigable. Thus the clothiers of Leeds and Wakefield found new
and cheaper markets when communication with Hull by the Aire
and the Calder was opened up in 1699; Preston gained its oppor-
tunity for manufacturing development when the Douglas (1720)
carried Wigan coal to the Ribble ; the connection of Sheffield with
the Humber by means of the Don (1732) gave a fresh impulse to the
cutlery trade. But rivers were unsatisfactory as carriers of goods.
Subject to flood or drought, constantly liable to become choked,
tortuous in their course, they were also limited in their range and
left large districts untouched. If waterways were to be made
efficient means of carriage, they must be permanently supplied
with water, subject neither to deficiency nor excess, capable of
being carried over or through natural obstacles in any direction
required.

In 1755 the Sankey Brook Canal brought the St. Helens coal-
fields into direct communication with Liverpool by means of a

1The Opening of Rivers for Navigation, etc., by Francis Mathew, 1655.
A Mediterranean Passage by Water from London to Bristol, etc., by Francis
Mathew, 1670.

2 Englands Improvement by Sea and Land, by Andrew Yarranton Gent. 1677.

278 HIGHWAYS

new channel, fed with a continuous supply of water, and provided
with a system of locks which overcame the difficulties of the descent
into the valley of the Mersey. This channel was the first true
canal, as distinguished from straightening the courses of rivers.
Before the work was completed, the Duke of Bridgwater obtained
the sanction of the legislature (1759) for the famous canal which
bears his name. Brindley’s triumph was the real starting-point of
the movement. He was the engineer of numerous similar works.
The Mersey and Trent Canal, for example, joined Liverpool and
Hull, and thus united the ports of the East and the West. Branches
were thrown out, which gradually linked together Liverpool,
London, Bristol, Birmingham, and Hull by water. The develop-
ment of inland navigation which Brindley had begun was continued
by Telford and others. The new means of transport powerfully
influenced the progress of the industrial revolution. Between 1790
and 1794 alone, 81 Canal Acts were obtained, and a canal mania
was started, which was only paralleled by the railway mania of
the last century. By 1834 England had been covered with a net-
work of more than 4000 miles of canals and navigable rivers.

To some extent the surface of the roads was saved by the sub-
stitution of water-carriage for the conveyance of heavy goods.
But the development of canal traffic did not always improve
internal communications. The increased carriage of heavy goods,
such as coal, iron, timber, lime, stone, salt, and corn, to and from
the wharves, destroyed the roads in the neighbourhood. To some
extent this extraordinary traffic was carried on railways, laid down
by the canal companies, as feeders to their trade.t But the range
was limited. It was plain that, if full advantage was to be taken
of the new means of inland navigation, roads must be scientifically
constructed to bear the increased traffic. Im McAdam and Telford
were found the exponents of this necessary science. The progress
of enclosures also favoured road-improvement. So long as land
lay unenclosed, travellers were allowed to deviate from the track
to avoid the ruts worn by their predecessors. Thomas Mace
(1675)? describes how land was “ spoiled and trampled down in
all wide roads where coaches and carts take liberty to pick and

1See chapter xvii. pp. 350-3.

2 Profit, Conveniency, and Pleasure, to the Whole Nation, Being a Short
Rational Discourse . .. concerning the Highways of England, by Thomas
Mace (1675).

ROMAN ROADS ei 279

chuse for their best advantages.” A century later, a Reporter
contrasts the state of a district near Norwich in the last decade of
the eighteenth century with its condition before 1760: ‘ Thirty
years ago,” he says, “it was an extensive heath without either
tree or shrub, only a sheep-walk to another farm. Such a number
of carriages crossed it, that they would sometimes be a mile abreast
of each other in search of the best track. Now there is an excellent
turnpike road, enclosed on each side with a good quickset hedge,
and the whole laid out in enclosures and cultivated in the Norfolk
system in superior style.’’ Instead of these common tracks, with
their wide margins of deviation, enclosure Acts substituted defined
and constructed roads. Not only was science needed for making
new highways, but the existing machinery for maintaining those
already in existence had broken down under the stress of modern
needs.
@; Throughout the Middle Ages the great Roman roads were the main
thoroughfares. Watling Street ran from Kent to Chester and York,
branching northwards to Carlisle and Newcastle ; the Fosse Way
‘crossed England from Bath to Lincoln; Ermine Street led from
London to Lincoln and thence to Doncaster and York; Icknield
Street, more difficult to trace, swept inland from Norwich, passed
through Dunstable, and ultimately reached Southampton. For
centuries they required and received little repair owing to the
solidity of their construction. A firm foundation of beaten earth
was secured. On this were laid, first, large stones, often embedded
in mortar ; then a layer of small stones mixed with mortar ; above
these two layers, lime mixed with chalk and pounded brick, or with
gravel, sand, and clay ; and finally the paved surface.

Planned and built by the State, these Roman highways offered
a striking contrast to the subsequent roads, which were laid out in
haphazard fashion as need arose. The art of road-making was lost,
or the cost beyond the reach of local effort. Unmetalled tracks
crept along the edges of streams, which often afforded a better
bottom than the ways themselves, or sought sound foothold for
men and beasts across unenclosed land, or boldly kept on high ground
to escape the bogs and quagmires. Gradually footways, horseways,
and cartways + were levelled by traffic across the plains or hollowed

1 The Romans recognised the same distinctions. The iter, actus, and via
were the English footpath, bridle-way, and carriage road. Both in Roman and
in English law the greater included the less, so that the via was open, not only
to vehicles, but to foot-passengers and animals,

280 HIGHWAYS

through the hills. Besides the highways between town and town,
each manor had its by-roads, leading from the village to the open
fields, the commons, the mill, or the church. The ordinary principle
which governed the repair of thoroughfares was that they should
be maintained by those who had the use of them. The duty of
maintaining communication between market towns rested on the
inhabitants of the parishes through which the roads passed ; within
the limits of chartered towns it fell on the townsmen, on whom rates
or tolls were sometimes levied. Local by-roads within the boun-
daries of manors were repaired by the manorial tenantry as one of
the conditions of their tenure, and they were bound to provide the
necessary implements and labour. These obligations were respec-
tively enforced by county or municipal authorities or manorial
courts. But road repair did not entirely depend on the performance
of legal liabilities. It was also enjoined as a religious duty. Travel-
lers were classed with the sick and poor as objects of Christian charity.
Indulgences were granted to offenders who gave their money or
their labour for the construction or repair of roads and bridges.
For the same object pious bequests were encouraged. Gifts of this
kind occur as late as the sixteenth century, and in the reign of
Edward VI. one of the enquiries made at the Visitations of Bishops
was whether these bequests were administered according to the
intentions of the donors.

For a short period during the reign of Edward I., road improve-
ment had received some attention from Government. When new
ports, like those of Sandwich and Hull, were constructed, care was
taken to provide good approaches by land. An attempt was also
made to safeguard the lives and property of travellers on the king’s
highway. Adjoining landowners were compelled by statute to
clear all roads between market towns from trees and underwood to a
space of 200 feet on either side. The object was not the preservation
of the roads by the admission of light and air, but the destruction
of the lurking places of robbers. If any crime of violence was
committed on a highway not properly cleared, the adjoining owner
was held responsible. But the energies of Edward’s successors
were absorbed in other directions than the maintenance of rural
roads. As the fourteenth century advanced, the general burden of
taxation and the scarcity of labour increased the growing neglect
of public highways. Agricultural changes told in the same direction.
So long as lay and ecclesiastical nobles, in order to consume the

ROADS IN TUDOR TIMES _ 281

produce of their estates, had travelled from manor to manor with
their retinues, household furniture, and utensils, they had been
interested in the means of transit. Their visits ceased when their
lands were let on lease. At the same time the decay of the manorial
organisation facilitated the evasion by the tenants of duties which
had ceased to be personally valuable to their lords. Roads, made at
will, were repaired, or not, at pleasure ; everybody’s business was
nobody’s business ; the parochial liability, like the manorial obliga-
tion, was rarely and unsystematically enforced. Highways fell
deeper into decay, and their neglect was increased by the cessa-
tion of voluntary efforts, when services which mediaeval piety
recognised as religious duties came to be regarded only as civil
burdens.

The condition of the roads across the Weald of Kent, at the open-
ing of the Tudor period, was probably no worse than that of highways
in other districts. Yet they are described as “right deep and
noyous,” only to be used at “ great pains, peril and jeopardy.” 1
The isolation of rural districts can hardly be pictured by the present
generation. It restricted the agricultural use of the land, because
the interchange of its products was difficult, and each district was
compelled to grow its own corn. At the same time, it was recognised
that, in the interests of expanding trade, the provision of better
means of transit was necessary. The first general Act of Parliament
applied to bridges and their approaches.2__ Passed in 1530, the statute
placed the county on the same footing with regard to bridges as
that in which the parish already stood to highways. It directed
justices of the peace to enquire into the conditions of bridges in
their districts, to ascertain what persons were liable for their main-
tenance, or to levy a rate on the inhabitants for their repair and that
of their approaches for 300 feet on either side. In 1555 another
general Act was passed, dealing with the roads from market town
to market town, which it describes as ‘“‘ verie noysome and tedious
to travell in and dangerous to all Passengers and Carriages.” It
applied to the discharge of parochial liabilities the same methods by
which manorial tenants had met their local obligations. Each
parish was to elect two “‘ honest persons ”’ of the parish as “‘ survey-
ors and orderers,” for the repair of the roads within its boundaries

114 and 15 Hen. VIII. ec. 6, Sections 1, 3.

222 Hen. VIII. c. 5.
$2 and 3 Philip and Mary, ec. 8.

282 HIGHWAYS

by compulsory labour. Four days of eight hours each! were
appointed for the work, the parishioners providing carts, teams,
implements, and labour, according to their means. Like other
Tudor legislation, the Act failed in its administration. Though
neglect to discharge the liability was punishable by fines, little
effect was produced.

After the Restoration further efforts were made to improve
facilities of communication. Stage, or long, waggons had begun
in 1564 to ply between the metropolis and the principal towns in the
provinces ; private carriages were increasing; about 1645 stage-
coaches were established. Travelling on wheels was recommended
for its “‘ admirable commodiousness,”’ and many of those who thus
traversed the roads to London were “‘ persons of quality ’’ who could
make their influence felt. Some means, in addition to statute
labour, was required to maintain the roads in repair for the increasing
traffic. During the first ten years of the reign of Charles II. it
seemed probable that this supplement would be provided by the
development of highway rates, which had been introduced.in 1656.
Eventually a new auxiliary to statute labour was devised, which
arrested the growth of rates, and prolonged the life of the old
system by a century and a half. In 1663 the first Turnpike Trust?
was established on the Great North Road by the erection of toll-
bars at Wadesmill, Caxton, and Stilton, and by the exaction of toll
from those who used the highway. This portion of one of the
principal roads in the country is described in the Act as “ ruinous
and almost impassable.” The inhabitants of the adjoining parishes
were too poor to put or keep the highway in repair, and though the
Act did not relieve them from their liability, the tolls raised a fund
towards the maintenance of the road. Other turnpike trusts were
established on the same principle. Their creation was unpopular.
Riots broke out, like those subsequently associated with the name of
Rebecca in Wales; toll-bars were frequently pulled down and
burned ; and the opposition was only checked by an Act passed in
the reign of George IT. (1728) which made their destruction a felony.
Turnpike Trusts multiplied rapidly, till in 1760 it was true to say that

*no cit, nor clown,
Can gratis see the country or the town.”

1In 1562, by 5 Eliz. c. 13, the “statute labour,” as it was called, was in-
creased from 4 to 6 days.

2116) Car. Ee: 1:

THE PERILS OF TRAVELLING 283

Travelling still continued to be a peril. The number of patents
that were taken out to prevent coaches from overturning is some
evidence of the risk. Nor were the inventions always effective.
They did not prevent George II. and his queen from being upset in
1730 near Parsons Green on their way into London. In October, 1736,
the queen was advised to leave Kensington Palace for St James’s,
because the road was so “‘ infamously bad ” as to separate her from
her Ministers by “‘ an impassable gulf of mud.” If travelling was so
difficult for royal personages over roads in the neighbourhood of
London, the perils of penetrating rural districts may be imagined.
In the winter months carriage traffic was suspended. Only horsemen
could make their way. Judges and lawyers rode the circuits,
chasing John Doe and Richard Roe from assize town to assize town
on horseback. Few Quarter Sessions passed without some district
being “ presented’ for non-repair of roads, and heavy were the
fines inflicted by bruised and shaken judges, who, thinking that the
majesty of the law was ill-supported by top-boots, endeavoured to
reach their destination in carriages.

Even after Turnpike Trusts were generally established, travelling
still continued to be neither swift, nor easy, nor safe. Guide-posts
were almost unknown, and the way was frequently lost. In the
reign of Charles II., the stage had taken two days to reach Oxford
from London, and the journey to Exeter occupied four days. A
century later, the one stage-coach, which plied once a month
between Edinburgh and London, accomplished the journey in from
twelve to fourteen days. Family coaches, lumbering and jolting
over the uneven roads, for steel springs were not applied to carriages
before the middle of the eighteenth century, made twenty miles a
day. They set out provisioned and armed as if for a siege. When
Sir Francis Headpiece travelled to London, he carried with him in
his coach “ the family basket-hilt-sword, the Turkish scimetar, the
old blunder-buss, a good bag of bullets, and a great horn of powder.”’}
Such precautions were not always effectual against a well-mounted
highwayman, expert in the use of handier weapons; and the slow
pace at which vehicles travelled, unless they were defended with
determination, made them easy victims.

Off the frequented lines of communication, and often even on
these, the condition of the eighteenth century roads, as has been

1 Vanbrugh’s Journey to London, produced on the stage by Cibber, in 1728,
under the title of the Provoked Husband.

284 HIGHWAYS

shown in a previous chapter, rendered travelling in the winter months
difficult, and sometimes, except for horsemen, impossible. But after
1760 a determined effort was made at improvement. Here and there
some local genius, like “‘ Blind Jack ” Metcalf of Knaresborough,
had already anticipated the methods of Telford and McAdam.
In other parts of England, the turnpike trusts were placing portions
of the highways in better repair. But the districts for which they
were formed were often too small to be useful. Thus the main road
from Shrewsbury to Bangor (85 miles) was in the care of six trusts,
most of them in debt, all too poor to pay for skilled labour, and each
too jealous of the others to co-operate. The multiplication of these
turnpike trusts, though it often defeated its own object, affords
strong evidence of the extent to which public attention had been
called to the need for improved facilities of communication.
Between 1760 and 1774 no less than 452 Turnpike Acts were passed,
and in the sixteen years from 1785 to 1800 this number was increased
by 643. Two General Highway Acts were passed in 17731 which
consolidated the previous legislation on the subject of parochial lia-
bility for road repair, transferred the appointment of surveyors to the
justices of the peace out of lists of names submitted by each parish,
allowed the compulsory statute labour for six days to be commuted
by money payments, and authorised the levy of a rate, not exceeding
6d. in the pound, for the provision of road materials. In 1784
Palmer organised the service of mail-coaches. But letters were often
still left at inns on main thoroughfares, where they remained in the
bar till the ink had faded and the wrapper had turned the colour
of saffron. The arrival of the pedlar was still eagerly expected in
country villages, where he did not always appear as the philosophical
enthusiast of the poet’s licence. Rather he was the milliner of rural
beauties, the arbiter of fashion to village bucks, the newsagent of
the alehouse politician, the retailer of the most recent gossip, the
vendor of smuggled tea, the purveyor of the latest amorous ditty.
He was typical of the times when villages were isolated, self-sufficing,
dependent on his summer and winter circuits for their knowledge of
the world beyond the parish boundaries.

Both Young and Marshall note the improvement which was made
during the last quarter_of the-eighteenth century in the roads of
certain districts. Yet their writings, as well as the reports to the
Board of Agriculture (1793-1815), afford abundant evidence that else-

113 Geo. III. ce. 78 and 84.

SLOW PROGRESS OF IMPROVEMENT 285

where much remained to be done. For the slow progress made there
were many reasons. Country gentlemen used the same arguments
against new roads which were afterwards employed against railways.
“* Merry England ”’ would be merry no longer if her highways ceased
to be miry. They dreaded the disturbance of their game, feared the
intrusion of town manners, resented the sacrifice of their interests
to those of wealthy traders. As magistrates they were reluctant
to enforce the law of road-repair against their own tenants. Statute
labour was deservedly unpopular. Surveyors, forced into office
against their will, only called upon their neighbours to fulfil their
liabilities as a last resource, and at seasons when agricultural work
was slack. Urban and rural interests were opposed. Market
towns might demand metalled roads for the transport of their
merchandise ; but self-sufficing villages were content with the drift-
ways which were sufficient to enable them to house their crops, and
to drag their flour from the mill through the same ruts which their
ancestors had worn. Even when a parish was active in road-repair,
its energies were generally misdirected. Roads were unguarded at
the sides. Drainage was often provided by cutting open grips across
their surface. If any convexity was attempted, it was so exaggerated
as to be dangerous ; the sides sloped like the roof of a house. Hence
the whole traffic fell on the centre, which soon wore into ruts. Many
roads were undrainable, because the continual scraping of mud from
the surface had sunk them below the level of the adjoining land.
Hence they were always wet, and, from the rapid decay of material,
expensive to maintain. Where a parish was apathetic, the least
possible mending was done in the worst possible way. A faggot, or a
bundle of broom or heather, powdered with gravel, served to stop
a bad hole ; if beyond repair by such means, mud, scraped from the
sides of the roads and ditches, was thrown on the centre of the road,
and into this bed was shot a cartload of large unbroken stones. Not
infrequently the road material, raised and carted at the parish
expense, missed its destination, and made good, not the road, but
the gateways or the yard of some neighbouring farmer.

The system of road maintenance was proving inadequate for
modern requirements. Responsibility ceased at the parish boun-
daries, and no uniformity was possible. The statute labour was
everywhere enforced with difficulty. It was also exhausted at one
particular season, and nothing more was done till the period recurred.
It was a system of occasional outlay without continuous repair.

286 HIGHWAYS

Surveyors were not appointed for their skill, but were compelled to
serve against their will. The experience which they gained in their
twelve months’ service was wasted by their retirement at the end of
the year when their successors were appointed. Already in France,
Pierre de Trésaguet (1716-74) had set an example to European
countries, laid down the principles of the construction of broken-
stone roads, organised his corps of day-labourers, and substituted
the principle of continuous upkeep for that of periodic repair.
Already both Ireland and Scotland had gained a lead over England
in the matter of road improvement. In Ireland statute labour was
abolished in 1765,! and road-making entrusted to the County Grand
Juries. Arthur Young says that before the Act was passed, Irish
roads, “like those of England, remained impassable under the
miserable police of the six days’ labour; . . . now the effect in all
parts of the Kingdom is so great, that I found it perfectly practicable
to travel upon wheels by a map. I will go here, I will go there; I
could trace a route upon paper as wild as fancy could dictate ;
and everywhere I found beautiful roads, without break or hindrance,
to enable me to realise my design.”2 In Scotland, in 1803, Com-
missioners were appointed for making roads in the Highlands.
The expense was defrayed in equal portions by grants from Parlia-
ment and local contributions ; the assistance of Telford was secured,
and more than 900 miles of good roads were constructed.

England, however, still lagged behind. Various alterations in the
law were proposed and discussed. It was suggested that the labour
service should be commuted for a money payment, and that, even
if only a quarter of the equivalent were obtained in money, the roads
would gain. On the other hand, it was said that commutation
would be certainly unpopular with farmers, who would regard the
pecuniary liability as a new tax. It was urged that large districts
should be formed by uniting a number of parishes ; that surveyors
should be appointed for their knowledge of road-making, and should
be paid salaries ; or that, as Mace had suggested in 1675, ‘‘ daymen ”’
should be continuously employed upon the roads at weekly wages.
It was not, however, till twenty years after the peace of 1815 that
any substantial legislative changes were made. Before that time
the science and practice, as well as the expense, of road-making and
repair had made considerable advance. From 1811 onwards
Parliamentary Committees sat almost continuously to hear evidence

1 Trish Acts, 5 Geo. III. ec. 14. 2 Tour in Ireland, part ii. p. 40.

McADAM AND TELFORD W~ 287

and to report. It was gradually realised that the construction of a
good road required an unusual combination of practical and scientific
knowledge, and that the task was not only above the abilities of
inexperienced surveyors, but beyond the means of the inhabitants
of an ordinary parish. Public money was voted for the improvement
of national highways, and the services of the most celebrated engineer
of the day were enlisted in the work. ‘Telford in 1814 was employed
to make good the road from Glasgow to Carlisle and in the following
year to reconstruct the road from Shrewsbury to Holyhead. In his
opinion and practice, it was necessary to make a regular bottoming
of rough close-set pavement, on which a hard, smooth, inelastic
surface could be laid, so as to minimise the labour of traction by
offering the least resistance. The rival system was advocated by
McAdam. To him the “ Telford pavement” seemed unnecessary
for the preparation of a suitable surface. In his view an elastic
subsoil was even superior to a solid foundation ; he preferred a bog
to a rock, provided that the bog was sufficiently solid to bear a man’s
weight. As Surveyor-General of the Bristol roads (1815), he was
already putting his theories into practice on an extensive scale.
His practical success, his evidence before Parliamentary Committees,
and his skill with the pen! persuaded the English public of the sound-
ness of his theory. But the battle was hotly contested, and the
very heat of the controversy served a useful purpose. It kept the
improvement of English roads prominently before the public.
Scientific opinion, here and abroad, was on the side of Telford ;
but McAdam was the popular favourite. In 1827 he was appointed
Surveyor-General of roads in Great Britain. His influence was
paramount, and men, in their gratitude for the unwonted luxury of
safe and smooth travelling in fast coaches, were not disposed to
criticise too closely the scientific principles of the road magician.

Turnpike tolls provided some of the cost of road maintenance,
and served as auxiliaries to statute labour. For a time they satisfied
the urgency of the need. But the heavy interest on the loans raised
by the turnpike trustees, the excessive cost of management, the
profits exacted by those who farmed the tolls, left, at the best,
small margins for road expenditure. To increase the income, toll-bars
were multiplied or scales of payment raised. ‘The inequality of the
burden was strongly felt. In one district, five tolls might be paid

1A Practical Essay of the Scientific Repair and Preservation of Public Roads
(1819) ; Remarks on the Present System of Road-making (1820, 5th edition 1822).

288 HIGHWAYS

in twelve miles; in another, thirty might be travelled without a
single payment. The financial chaos of the trusts, as well as the
inadequacy of the statute labour, gave a fresh impulse to the
ultimate triumph of the rival principle of a rate. Already Justices
in Quarter Sessions had been empowered to levy a rate, assessed on
the principle of the poor-rate, for general purposes of highway
maintenance when other means proved insufficient, for the purchase
of road material, and to buy land for the widening of highways.
Already also the liability for statute labour might be compounded
by the payment of a money equivalent. In 1835 these principles
were extended by an Act! which abolished statute labour and
substituted highway rates for the maintenance of all minor roads.
The abolition of statute labour was a severe loss to the turnpike
trusts, to whom the legislature still looked for the repair of important
highways. In 1839, four years after the passing of the Highway
Act, a Select Committee reported that in some instances the creditors
of turnpike trusts had seized the tolls to secure payment of the
interest on their mortgages, and that nothing was available from that
source for road-repair. The development of railways struck the
trusts another blow, for the decay of the coaching-traffic deprived
them of one of the chief sources of their revenue. Their financial
position went from bad to worse. Drastic action was needed.
The powers of the Home Office to refuse the renewal of Turnpike
Acts were in 1864 transferred to a Select Committee of the House of
Commons. The new authority acted with vigour. Roads were
dis-turnpiked at the average rate of 1,500 miles a year.

The extinction of turnpike trusts threw upon local ratepayers a
heavy burden. Their existence had not relieved the parish from its
old liability : their removal revived that liability in the form of
increased rates. In rare instances, individuals were liable by tenure
or prescription for the repair of portions of public roads. But,
speaking generally, the parish was always responsible for the main-
tenance of the highways within its area. For a time, turnpike roads
had been partly maintained by the tolls which the trustees were
authorised to raise. Yet whenever the trusts neglected their work,
became bankrupt, or were extinguished, it was the inhabitants of the
parish, not the trustees, who were subject to indictment for failure to
maintain the roads. Tolls were subsidiary to local labour and local
rates; they were substitutes for neither. Now that they were

15 and 6 Wm. IV. c. 50.

HIGHWAY DISTRICTS AND MAIN RGADS 289

withdrawn, the whole burden fell on the locality. Some relief was
urgently needed. In order to distribute the burden more equitably,
the parishes were grouped into Highway Districts. Within each
area the cost was equalised. But parochial districts remained
responsible for the maintenance of roads within their areas, legally
liable for the extra burden if the expense was disproportion-
ately heavy, legally entitled to the special benefit if the cost was
disproportionately light. Further relief to local ratepayers was
required. It came in the form of excepting main roads from the
general law of district liability. Under the Highways and Loco-
motives Acts Amendment Act, 1878, the turnpike roads, whose
trusts had been dissolved, were made main roads, and half the cost
of their maintenance was transferred to the county authority, then
Quarter Sessions. The remainder of the liability for the repair of
main roads still rested on the parochial districts, a grant-in-aid
being made by the Government. Under the Local Government
Act, 1888, the County Council became the county authority, and
parochial districts were relieved of the remaining half of their liability
for the maintenance of main roads, wherever situated, and the cost
of their upkeep was transferred to the county generally. But
under the Public Health Act, 1875, the urban authorities were
already responsible for the maintenance of highways within their
areas. The effect of the two Acts of 1875 and 1888 was that urban
authorities might elect either to maintain the main roads within
their area themselves, or to call upon the County Council to do the
work. If they elected to maintain the roads themselves, the
measure of the County Council’s liability was a contribution towards
the cost properly incurred in the maintenance and reasonable
improvement of the main roads within the area.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE RURAL POPULATION. 1780-1813.

Effect of enclosures on the rural population ; no necessary reduction in the
number of small owners, but rather an increase ; consolidation of farms,
either by purchase from small owners, or by throwing tenancies together ;
the strict letter of the law; small occupiers become landless labourers ;
depopulation of villages when tillage was abandoned for pasture ; scarcity
of employment in open-field villages ; the literary controversy ; the mate-
rial injury inflicted upon the rural poor by the loss of the commons; no
possible equivalent in cash-value: the moral injury; the simultaneous
‘decay of domestic industries; the rapid rise after 1790 in the price of
provisions ; a substantial advance in agricultural wages.

Durine the thirty-three years from 1780 to 1813, the industrial
revolution, which in agriculture was expressed by the new methods
and spirit of farming, influenced rural life in two opposite directions.
Far-reaching changes were made which were justified, and even
demanded, by national exigencies. As, in trade, the capitalist
manufacturer displaced the small master-workman and domestic
craftsman, so, in agriculture, land was thrown together in large
holdings at the expense of small occupiers. Both manufacture and
agriculture became businesses which required the possession of
capital. Without money, workers, whether in trade or on land, lost
the prospect of themselves becoming masters or employers. But
the same changes which brought unexampled prosperity to land-
owners and large tenant-farmers, combined with other causes to
plunge the rest of the rural population into almost unparalleled
misery. The rapid growth of manufacturing towns created a
new demand for bread and meat; it raised the rents of land-
owners; it swelled the profits of farmers. For a long series
of years the war, by practically excluding foreign corn, main-
tained a high level of agricultural prices in spite of increased
production. But to labourers who neither owned nor occupied land,
the rise of prices brought no compensating advantages. On the

AN AGRARIAN REVOLUTION ~— 291

contrary, they paid more dearly for all necessaries of subsistence,
and the increased cost of living was not adequately met by a corre-
sponding rise in wages. At the same time, the steps which were
required for the adoption of those agricultural improvements, by
which the manufacturing industries as well as large owners and
occupiers of land were profiting, multiplied the numbers and increased
the sufferings of landless labourers. The extinction of open-field
farms reduced numbers of small occupiers to the rank of hired wage-
earners ; the appropriation of commons deprived many cottagers,
not only of free fuel, but of the means of supplementing wages by
the profits of their live-stock, their poultry, and their geese. In the
eighteenth as in the sixteenth century it was still partially true that
“enclosures make fat beasts and lean poor people.”

The structure of rural society was affected to its very foundations
by the agrarian revolution which was in progress. A great popula-
tion, standing on the verge of famine, and beginning to gather in
industrial centres, cried aloud for food. Technical improvements in
farming had been tested, which promised to supply the new demand
for bread and meat, if only free play were allowed to the modern
methods of production. It was from this point of view that agri-
cultural experts, almost to a man, were unanimous in requiring the
removal of mediaeval obstacles to progress, and the addition of
every possible acre to the cultivated area. As open-field arable
farms were broken up, as pasture-commons were divided, as wastes
were brought into cultivation, the face of the country altered. The
enclosing movement was attacked on various grounds. To its
effects were attributed the disappearance of the yeomanry, using
the words in the strict sense of farmer-owners ; the monopoly of,,,!
farms, or, in other words, the consolidation of a number of holdings |
into single occupations; the depopulation of rural villages; the
material and moral loss which was alleged to be inflicted on the poor.
Round these different points raged the contest of the latter half of
the eighteenth century. Meanwhile the work of enclosure went on
without interruption. At the present day the changes seem to have
been surprisingly rapid ; but to men who were living under the stress
of war and scarcity, they appeared almost criminally slow. They so
appeared to William Marshall, perhaps the most experienced and
the least bigoted of the agricultural observers of the day. Writing
in 1801, before the full pressure of famine prices had been felt, he
says: “Through the uncertainty and expense attending private

292 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813

acts, a great portion of the unstinted common lands remain nearly
as nature left them; appearing in the present state of civilisation and
science, as filthy blotches on the face of the country ; especially when
seen under the threatening clouds of famine which have now
repeatedly overspread it.’ 1

It does not appear that the necessary result of the enclosing
movement was to diminish the number-of occupying owners. On
the contrary, the first effect of an enclosure was to increase the free-
holders, since rights of open arable field occupation and of pasture
common were often replaced by allotments of land in separate
ownership. After 1689, the decline in the number of owners of
small estates begins to be noted by contemporary writers.2 “At
the Revolution,” says a “‘ Suffolk Gentleman,’ “ there existed a
race of Men in the Country besides the Gentlemen and Husbandmen,
called Yeomanry, Men who cultivated their own property, consisting
chiefly of farms from forty to fourscore pounds a year... the
Pride of the Nation in War and Peace . . . hardy, brave, and of
good morals.” Their alleged disappearance can only have been
remotely due to enclosure, if, as the ‘“‘ Suffolk Gentleman ”’ says,
“ by the influx of riches and a change of manners, they were nearly
annihilated in the year_1750.’’ On the other hand, a considerable
body of evidence exists to show that, after the accession of George
III., a reaction had set in, and that small owners were not only
numerous, but actually increasing in numbers. Thus Marshall,
writing in 1790 of small freeholders both in Yorkshire (Vale of
Pickering) and in Leicestershire, says : “‘Some years back, the same
species of frenzy,—T'erramania—showed itself here, as it did in
other districts. Forty years purchase was, then, not unfrequently
given.”’4 The Reports to the Board of Agriculture (1793-1815)
show that in many parts of the country small owners not only held
their ground, but once more were buying land. Thus of the north-
eastern counties generally, Young ° states that “‘ farmers have been
very considerable purchasers of land.” Norfolk (1804) is said to

1The Appropriation and Inclosure of Commonable and Intermixed Lands
(1801).

2 Authorities are quoted in The Disappearance of the Small Landowner,
by the Rev. A. H. Johnson (1909), pp. 136-8.

3 Letter to Sir T. C. Bunbury, Bart., on the Poor Rates and the High Price of
Provisions (1795).

* Rural Economy of the Midland Counties, vol. i. p. 16.
5 Young’s Hertfordshire (1804), p. 18.

OCCUPYING OWNERS = 293

contain “ estates of all sizes, from nearly the largest scale to the little
freehold ; one of £25,000 a year ; one of £14,000; one of £13,000 ;
two of £10,000; many of about £5,000; and an increasing number
of all smaller proportions.””! In Suffolk (1797) “the rich yeomanry ”
are described as “‘ very numerous . . . farmers occupying their own
lands, of a value rising from £100 to £400 a year.’’? In Essex (1807),
“there never was a greater proportion of small and moderate-
sized farms, the property of mere farmers, who retain them in their
own immediate occupation, than at present. Such has been the
flourishing state of agriculture for twenty or thirty years past, that
scarcely an estate is sold, if divided into lots of forty or fifty to two
or three hundred a year, but is purchased by farmers. . . . Hence
arises a fair prospect of landed property gradually returning to a
situation of similar possession to what it was a hundred or a hundred
and fifty years ago, when our inferior gentry resided upon their
estates in the country.” ®

In the South-Eastern and East Midland counties, no marked
decrease in the number of small estates is noticed. ‘‘ One third ”’
of Berkshire 4 is said to have been occupied in 1813 by the proprietors
of the soil. Owners of landed property from £200 to £600 a year
were “very numerous.” Oxfordshire (1794) contained ‘“‘ many
proprietors of a middling size, and many small proprietors, par-
ticularly in the open fields.” > In Nottinghamshire (1798) ‘‘ some
considerable, as well as inferior yeomen occupy their own lands.”’ 6
Of late years in Hampshire (1813) ‘‘ a considerable subdivision of
property has taken place.”’ Speaking of the farmers on the chalk
hills of the county, the Reporter says that ‘‘ many of them are the
possessors of small estates which their thrifty management keeps
upon the increase.””? In Kent, up to at least 1793, the number of
owners of land seemed annually on the increase, “‘ by the estates
which are divided and sold to the occupiers. There is no description
of persons who can afford to give so much money for the purchase
of an estate as those who buy for their own occupation. Many in
the eastern part of this county have been sold, within these few
years, for forty, and some for fifty years purchase, and upwards.’ §

1 Young’s Norfolk (1804), p. 17. 2 Young’s Suffolk (1797), p. 8.

3 Young’s Hssex (1807), vol. i. pp. 39, 40.

* Mavor’s Berkshire (1808), p. 113. 5 Davis’ Oxfordshire (1794), p. 11.

5 Lowe’s Nottinghamshire (1798), p. 8.

* Vancouver's Hampshire (1813), pp. 51, 80. ’ Boys’ Kent (1796), p. 26.

294 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813

In the West Midland and South-Western district, small owners
were at least holding their.own. In North Wilts (1794), where a
considerable number of enclosures had been made, “ a great deal of
the property has been divided and sub-divided, and gone into the
hands of the many.”’! Brent Marsh in Somersetshire (1797) was a
district of 20,000 acres which the stagnant waters rendered un-
wholesome to man and beast. Within the last twenty years much of
this land had been enclosed and drained under a variety of Acts of
Parliament. ‘‘Scarcely a farmer,” says the Reporter, “‘ can now
be found who does not possess a considerable landed property ; and
many, whose fathers lived in idleness and sloth, on the precarious
support of a few half-starved cows, or a few limping geese, are now in
affluence, and blessed with every needful species of enjoyment.” ?
Devonshire (1794) continued to be a county of small properties.®
In Gloucestershire (1807), “‘ the number of yeomen who possess free-
holds, of various value, is great, as appears from the Sheriff’s return
of the poll at the election for a county member in 1776, when 5790
freeholders voted, and the number since that period is much in-
creased.’’4 Landed property in Shropshire (1803) is ‘‘ considerably
divided. . . . The number of gentlemen of small fortune living on
their estates, has decreased ; their descendants have been clergymen
or attornies, either in the country, or shopkeepers in the towns of
their own county ; or more probably in this county emigrated to
Birmingham, Liverpool, to Manchester, or to London; but then
the opulent farmer, who has purchased the farm he lives upon .. .
is a character that has increased.” 5

The North and North-Western districts afford similar evidence,
though in two counties a decrease is conspicuous. In Staffordshire
(1813) the best and most improving farmers were “ the proprietors
of 200 or 300 acres of land, who farm it themselves.” & Derbyshire
(1794) possessed numerous small occupiers, who eked out the profits
of the land by mining, spinning, and weaving ; but there were also
occupiers of another description, ‘‘ very properly styled yeomen ;
men cultivating their own estates with a sufficient capital.’ 7 In
Cheshire (1808) “‘ the number of small land-owners is not apparently
less than in other counties. The description of this latter class has,

1 Davis’ Wilishire (1794), p. 8. ?Billingsley’s Somersetshire (1797), pp. 166-73.
8 Fraser’s Devonshire (1794), p. 17. 4 Rudge’s Gloucestershire (1807), p. 34.
5 Plymley’s Shropshire (1803), p. 90. ° Pitt’s Staffordshire, (1813), p. 20.

* Brown’s Derbyshire (1794), p. 14.

WESTMORELAND “STATESMEN ’* 295

however, been very much altered of late years. From the advan-
tages which have been derived from trade, and from the effects of
the increase of taxes, which have prevented a man living with the
same degree of comfort on the same portion of land he could for-
merly, many of the old owners have been induced to sell their estates ;
and new proprietors have spread themselves over the county, very
different in their habits and prejudices.”’! In Lancashire (1795)
“the yeomanry, formerly numerous and respectable, have greatly
diminished of late, but are not yet extinct ; the great wealth, which
has in many instances been so rapidly acquired by some of their
neighbours, and probably heretofore dependants, has offered suffi-
cient temptation to venture their property in trade, in order that
they might keep pace with these fortunate adventurers. . . . Not
only the yeomanry, but almost all the farmers, who have raised
fortunes by agriculture, place their children in the manufacturing
line.”? ‘‘A large proportion of the county of Westmoreland,” says
the Reporter; ‘“‘is possessed by a yeomanry, who occupy small
estates of their own, from £10 to £50 a year.” These owners, as
distinguished from tenant-farmers, were called “‘ statesmen. They
live poorly and labour hard ; and some of them, particularly in the
vicinity of Kendall, in the intervals of labour from agricultural
avocations, busy themselves in weaving stuffs for the manufacturers
of that town. . . . This class of men is daily decreasing. The turn-
pike roads have brought the manners of the capital to this extremity
of the kingdom. The simplicity of ancient times is gone. Finer
clothes, better dwellings, and more expensive viands, are now sought.
after by all. This change of manners, combined with other
circumstances which have taken place within the last forty years, has
compelled many a statesman to sell his property, and reduced him to
the necessity of working as a labourer in those fields, which, perhaps,
he and his ancestors had for many generations cultivated as their
own.” ‘A considerable part of the West Riding ”’ (of Yorkshire),
in 1799, “‘is possessed by small proprietors, and this respectable
class of men, who generally farm their own lands, are as numerous
in this district as in any other part of the Kingdom.” * In the North
Riding (1800), ‘“ the size of estates is very variable ; about one-third
of it is possessed by yeomanry . . . much the largest proportion of

1 Holland’s Cheshire (1808), p. 79. 2 Holt’s Lancashire (1795), p. 13.
3 Pringle’s Westmoreland (1794), pp. 18, 40.
4Brown’s West Riding of Yorkshire (1799), p. 7.

296 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813

the dales of the moorlands is in the possession of yeomanry, rarely
amounting to £150 per annum.” ! The Reporter asks “‘ the common
question, whether the number of the yeomanry increases or
diminishes. . . . In a country like this, which is merely agricultural,
I should suspect them to increase, in consequence of large properties
having in late years been sold in parcels, and there being but few
instances of gentlemen already possessed of considerable estates,
making large purchases.”

The Reports to the Board of Agriculture show that small owners
were still numerous in many counties, and were increasing in Norfolk,
Kssex, in Hampshire,and Kent,in North Wilts, Somerset, Gloucester-
shire, Shropshire, and the North Riding of Yorkshire. They were
dwindling in Lancashire, which was rapidly developing as a manu-
facturing centre, and in Westmoreland, where the hard penurious
lives of the older race of statesmen were not congenial to their
descendants. In Hertfordshire farmers were not buying land, unlike
their brethren in the eastern counties ;? but possibly the competi-
tion of city merchants gave land in the neighbourhood of London a
residential value. In Warwickshire (1794) it is definitely stated that
consolidation of farms was driving occupiers off the land. The
Reporter is speaking of open fields “in the southern and eastera
parts of this county,” which had been enclosed, and mostly pi
ted into pasture. ‘* These lands, being now grazed, want much fewer
hands to manage them than they did in their former open state.
Upon all enclosures of open-fields, the farms have generally been
made much larger; from these causes, the hardy yeomanry of
country villages have been driven for employment into Birmingham,
Coventry, and other manufacturing towns, whose flourishing trade
has sometimes found them profitable employment.’ ? But though
in this passage the word “ yeomanry ’’* is used, it by no means

1 Tuke’s North Riding (1800), pp. 23, 28. ? Young’s Hertfordshire (1804), p. 18.

3 Wedge’s Warwickshire (1794), p. 20.

4 The word ‘“‘ yeoman,”’ which certainly included leaseholders for lives, and
copyholders, was net confined to owners of land which they cultivated with
their own hands, without being entitled to a crest. Bacon (Works, vol. vi.
p. 95) defines the English yeomanry as “ the middle people between gentlemen
and peasants,’’ many of them living on “tenancies for years, lives and at
will.’’ Latimer’s ‘“‘ father was a yeoman, but had no land of his own.” He
rented his occupation at £4 a year, and was a tenant-farmer. Blackstone
uses the word as equivalent to qualified rural voters (Commentaries, bk. i. ch.
12). The definite restriction of the word to farmer-owners is a comparatively
modern usage belonging to the nineteenth century. See Dictionary of Political
Heonomy, s.v. Yeoman,

PASTURE RIGHTS SS 297

follows that it is employed in the strict sense of occupiers who owned
the land which they cultivated themselves. More probably it bears
the looser meaning of “ open-field farmers,” with all their picturesque
varieties of land tenure. Be this as it may, the evidence of the
Reports is strong as to the general conditions of the country. In
the period which they cover, and for a few years before, no great
inroad had been made on the numbers of small owners. No neces-
sary connection can, therefore, be established between the break-up
of open-field farms and the alleged disappearance of farmer-owners.

The passage quoted from the Warwickshire Report indicates the
lines on which the conflicting assertions of advocates and opponents
of enclosures may be reconciled. The consequences, and often the
objects, of the extinction of the system of intermixed arable strips
on the open-fields, and of the partition of the pasture-commons were,
generally speaking, the consolidation of larger holdings in the
separate occupation of individuals. ‘The village farm, as has been
previously stated, consisted of two parts. There was the arable
land, cultivated in\ntermixed strips ; there were the grazing rights
exercised over the pasture commons. Both in legal theory and as
a historical fact, only the partners in the cultivation of the tillage
fand were entitled to the pasture rights, which were limited to each
individual by the size of his arable holding. Outside this close
corporation any persons who turned in stock were trespassers ; they
encroached, not only on the rights of the owner of the soil, but on
the rights of those arable farmers to whom the herbage belonged.
Strangers might be able to establish their rights; but the burden
of proof lay upon them. Similarly, it was only by long usage that
occupiers who rented ancient cottages could exercise pasture rights,
unless they also occupied arable land with their houses. The
statute of Elizabeth (31 Eliz. c. 7, 1589) which ordered that four
acres of land should be attached to each cottage let to agricultural
labourers, evidently refers to four acres of tillage. If no arable land
was attached to the cottage, the occupier might enjoy the right of
providing himself with fuel, but he could not turn out stock. It
was on these strict lines that enclosure proceeded, and one of its
promised advantages was the power of dealing with compact blocks
of land. In pursuance of this policy, Edward Laurence, in 1727,
instructs his steward to purchase “ all the Freeholders out as soon as
possible’; to “convert copyholds for lives into leaseholds for
lives ”’ ; to “ get rid of Farms of £8 or £10 per annum, always suppos-

298 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813

ing that some care be taken of the families ” ; to “ lay all the small
Farms, let to poor indigent People, to the great ones,” not forgetting
that ‘‘ it is much more reasonable and popular to stay till such Farms
fall into Hand by Death.” 1! This policy of substituting one large
tenant for several small occupiers was generally pursued. Beyond
possibility of dispute the Reports to the Board of Agriculture prove
the tendency towards that “ engrossment ” of farms which Tudor
writers denounced.?

The consolidaticn of holdings affected the old occupiers in very
different ways. Where land was held by freeholders, copyholders of
inheritance, or leaseholders for lives with outstanding terms, the
process of collecting large areas in the hands of one owner could
only be effected by purchase. On the enclosure of an open-field
farm with a common attached, each proprietor had received a
compact block, representing his intermixed arable strips, and an
allotment corresponding in value to his pasture rights. Sometimes
the area was so small as not to pay the cost of fencing ; it was sold
at once, often before the award was published. In some cases, the
rising standard of living, the loss of their domestic industries, the
attractions of the rapid fortunes realised in trade, the temptation of
~ the high prices which land commanded during the war, induced small
owners to sell their estates. Others who for a time clung to their
property found themselves, at a later stage, compelled to part with
it by the increase in taxation, by the enormous rise in the poor rates,
by the pressure of mortgages contracted for additional purchases,
jointures, and portions, or by the fluctuations of agricultural prices,
or. by the failure of banks. The period at which farmer-owners
diminished most rapidly in numbers was between the years 1813
and 1835. eng

Beyond the classes whose occupation of land or rights of com-
mon were of an independent or a permanent nature, no claim was,
as a rule, recognised by enclosure commissioners. If any compensa-
tion was made, it was on voluntary and charitable lines. The
strict letter of the law was generally followed. Occupiers of arable

1 Duty of a Steward to his Lord, pp. 37, 60, 55, 35.

2Thomas Wright, in The Monopoly of Small Farms a great cause of the
present Scarcity (1795), p. 9, urges the formation of societies to purchase large
estates, divide them into small farms, and let or sell them to small farmers.
‘* It is computed,”’ writes the author of A Plan for Relieving the Rates by Cottage
Acres, ete. (1817), ‘‘ that since the year 1760 there have been upwards of forty
thousand small farms monopolised and consolidated into large ones and as
many cottages annihilated.”

RURAL DEPOPULATION ~ 299

land, whose tenure depended on the will of the owner from whom
their rights were derived, had no independent or permanent title
to the strips which they cultivated, or to the common of pasture
which they had enjoyed in virtue of their arable holdings. Many
of them were offered no chance of renting land under the new system.
If the holdings were thrown together, and let to a farmer with
sufficient capital, the previous occupiers were at once reduced to
landless labourers. If the open-field farmer was allowed to remain
in the separate occupation of a compact holding, formed out of his
arable strips and commuted common rights, he was often ham-
pered by insufficient grass, by scanty capital, by the novelty of
his new position, by ignorance of any but the traditional practices
of farming. He went from bad to worse, and was in the end com-
pelled to surrender his land and compete for employment for
wages. Cottagers, who occupied at a yearly rent the ancient
cottages to which common rights were attached, received no
compensation for the loss of rights which they only exercised as
tenants. Squatters, who had encroached on the wastes and com-
mons, and had not made good their titles by prescriptive occupa-
tion, were evicted. Whether the village was depopulated by the
change or not, mainly depended on the use to which the enclosed
land was put.! If, as in the Warwickshire case, the tillage was
converted into pasture, employment was reduced, and the rural
population decreased. When, on the other hand, the breadth of
tillage was either maintained or extended, and when the modern
improvements in farming were introduced, there was an increase
in employment and also in numbers.

It would be a mistake to suppose that village farms created a
demand for agricultural labour, or offered facilities for acquiring
land to increasing numbers. The contrary was the case. The
open-field system was inelastic, adapted for a stationary popula-
tion, dependent for the employment of surplus numbers on the
large enclosed farms of the neighbourhood, or on the practice of
domestic handicrafts, eked out by common-rights exercised under
legal titles or by successful encroachments. The smaller occupiers,
their wives and families, tilled their holdings for themselves; the
common herdsman, shepherd, and swineherd tended their live-stock.

1 The question of depopulation is discussed in William Wales’ Inquiry into
the Present State of Population in England and Wales (1781), and in the Rev.
John Howlett’s Enquiry into the Influence which Enclosures have had upon the
Population of England (1786).

300 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813

On middle-sized occupations, servants in husbandry, annually
hired at the fairs for fixed yearly wages, and boarded and lodged
in the house, did the work of the farm. Except at harvest there
was little demand for day-labour. Threshing, the most unwhole-
some of rural occupations, was practically the only winter employ-
ment. On the open-fields, there were no quickset hedges to plash,
or trim, or weed; no ditches to scour; no drains to maintain.
There were no drilled crops to keep clean; turnips were seldom
grown, and beans rarely hoed. This scarcity of constant, and
especially of winter, employment, which will probably be reproduced
under the rule of small holdings, partly explains the slow growth
of rural population. It also emphasises the value to day-labourers
of commons and domestic handierafts. Without them it is difficult
to understand how agricultural labourers, who were not partners
in village farms, even existed. “In hay and harvest time,” writes
Forster,1 ‘it is inconceivable what numbers of tradesmen and
handicraftsmen flock into the country.” “If,” says Stone, “ the
farmers in the most unenclosed counties . . . where there are no
manufactories, could get no further assistance during their harvest
than from their own inhabitants, their grain would frequently be
spoiled.” 2 To the same effect wrote the Reporters to the Board
of Agriculture. Open-field farmers were in harvest dependent on
migratory labour. In unenclosed counties, says the Report to
the Board for Huntingdonshire, very little employment of a constant
kind ~vas given to labourers, who stop with the farmers to help
thresh out their grain in the winter, and “ leave for more cultivated
counties where labour is more required.’ The open-field farmer of
the county depended for harvesting on “the wandering Irish,
manufacturers from Leicestershire and other distant counties.”
The same was said to be true of Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire.
In Wiltshire, the crops were harvested by taskers “ from the more
populous parts of the county or from Somersetshire, or other
neighbouring counties.” ® In the Isle of Wight, during the harvest
of 1793, there were “ from 600 to 700 ’’ labourers employed ** from
Dorsetshire and West Somerset.” It illustrates the times to add
that, as there was a hot press out for the Navy, they came and
went with a pass from the Government.’ In Herefordshire the

1 Enquiry into the Present High Price of Provisions (1767).
2 Suggestions, etc., p. 31. 3 Davis’ Wiltshire (1794), p. 89.
4 Driver’s Hampshire (1794), p. 65.

RURAL DEPOPULATION —_ 301

crops were harvested by Welshmen from Cardiganshire, men
owning one horse between four or five, riding bare-backed, turn
and turn about, and “ covering great distances with extraordinary
speed.”’ 1 +
Enclosed counties where tillage was maintained, therefore,
already afforded larger and more constant employment than unen-
closed counties. Still greater was the demand for labour, where
the improved practices had been adopted. If, however, the
enclosed arable land was laid down to grass, the opposite effect
was produced. Up to the last decade of the eighteenth century,
it is probable that open arable farms, especially in the Midland
counties, were mainly enclosed for conversion to pasture. In the
later stages of the Napoleonic wars this tendency to grass-farming
was not only checked, but violently reversed, and large tracts of
pasture were ploughed for corn. Yet, during the first thirty years
of the reign of George III., the occupiers of village farms had
reason to fear, not only loss of their holdings, but scarcity of employ-
ment. Anonymous pamphlets are not the most reliable evidence ;
but the ‘‘ Country Gentleman’? is quoted by the Board of Agriculture
with approval. His description of the dislike and alarm with which
schemes of enclosure were regarded by the rural population may
therefore be accepted as true:—‘‘the great farmer dreads an
increase of rent, and being constrained to a system of agriculture
which neither his inclination or experience would tempt him to;
the small farmer, that his farm will be taken from him and con-
solidated with the larger; the cottager not only expects to lose
his commons, but the inheritable consequences of the diminution
of labour, the being obliged to quit his native place in search of
work.” Their fears were often justified. Many an open-field
farmer verified the truth of the “‘ Country Gentleman’s ”’ conclusion
that, after enclosure, “he must of necessity give over farming, and
betake himself to labour for the support of his family.” Hundreds
of cottagers, deprived of the commons, experienced that lack of
rural employment which drove them into the towns in search of
work. To make the lot of these ‘‘ reduced farmers” as easy as
possible, he recommended that a “sufficient portion of land ”
should be attached to their cottages to enable them to keep a cow

1 Clark’s Herefordshire (1794), p. 29.

2 The Advantages and Disadvantages of enclosing Waste Lands and Common
Fields, by a Country Gentleman (1772), pp. 8, 32.

302 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813

or two. With the gloomy forebodings of the “ Country Gentleman ”
may be contrasted the triumphant hopefulness of Arthur Young.
Both wrote at the same date; yet the gloom of the one and the
hopes of the other were equally well founded in the districts to which
they respectively refer. What, asks Young, will opponents “ say
to the inclosures in Norfolk, Suffolk, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire,
Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, and all the northern counties 2? What say
they to the sands of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Nottinghamshire, which
yield corn and mutton and beef from the force of INCLOSURE
alone? What say they to the Wolds of York and Lincoln, which
from barren heaths at ls. per acre are by INCLOSURE alone
rendered profitable farms? ... What say they to the vast
tracts in the peak of Derby which by INCLOSURE alone
are changed from black regions of ling to fertile fields covered
with cattle? What say they to the improvements of moors in
the northern counties, where INCLOSURES alone have made
those countries smile with culture which before were dreary as
night ?”’ 1

In 1774, when both Arthur Young and the “ Country Gentleman ”
were writing, improved methods of arable farming and the use of
roots, clover, and artificial grasses had not extended beyond a few
favoured districts; corn and cattle were still treated as distinct
departments of farming, impossible on the same land; the ten-
dency was still strong to convert arable land into pasture; the
science of stock-breeding and stock-rearing was still in its infancy ;
improved means of communication had not relieved farmers in
almost every district from the necessity of devoting the greater
part of their holdings to corn-growing, or enabled them to put
their land to the best use by facilitating the interchange of arable
produce ; above all, no urgent demand for meat and milk, as well
as bread, was as yet made by a rapidly growing class of artisans.
In another twenty years these conditions had been changed, or
were altering fast. But it is to this early period, when arable
land was being converted to pasture, and the superiority of the
new agricultural methods was still disputed, that nearly all the
writers belonged, who are most frequently quoted for or against
enclosures. After 1790 no voice is raised against the movement
on any other ground than the moral and social injury inflicted
upon open-field farmers and commoners. The economic gain is

1 Political Arithmetic (1774), p. 150.

CHANGE IN ARGUMENTS AGAINST ENCLOSURES 303

admitted.1 Individual occupation, as an instrument of scientific
and practical farming and of increased production, had demon-
strated its superiority over commonable fields. The supply of eggs
and poultry may have dwindled ; but it was more than compen-
sated by the larger supply of bread and meat. The arguments of
the deserted village and of scarcity of employment were losing
their force, when, under the strong pressure of necessity, the reac-
tion had set in from pasture to extended tillage. In these directions
the defence of the enclosing movement was immensely strengthened.
But, during the same period, the social results of the agrarian revolu-
tion were rapidly revealing themselves, and were attracting increased
attention. Those results, aggravated in their evil effects by

1 The following works may be quoted in proof :

1. Essay on the Nature and Method of ascertaining the Specifick Shares of
Proprietors wpon the Inclosure of Common Fields, by H. 8S. Homer, 1766.
2. An Enquiry into the Reasons For and Against Inclosing the Open Fields,
by a member of the Legislature, 1767.
3. An Enquiry into the Causes of the Present High Price of Provisions, by
Nathaniel Forster, 1767.
4. Reflections on Inclosing Large Commons and Common Fields, by W.
Pennington, 1769.
5. Observations on Reversionary Payments, etc., by Richard Price, 1771.
6. The Advantages and Disadvantages of inclosing Waste Lands and Open
Fields, by a Country Gentleman, 1772.
7. An Inquiry into the Reasons For and Against inclosing Open Fields, by
Stephen Addington, 2nd edition, 1772.
8. An Inquiry into the Connection between the present price of provisions and
the Size of Farms, by a Farmer [John Arbuthnot], 1773.
9. Four Tracts, together with Two Sermons, on political and commercial
subjects, by Josiah Tucker, 1774.
10. Hints to Gentlemen of Landed Property, by Nathaniel Kent, 1777.
11. An Enquiry into the Advantages and Disadvantages resulting from Bulls
of Inclosure, etc., Anon, 1780.
12. Observations on a Pamphlet entitled An Enquiry into the Advantages, etc.,
Anon, 1781 (an answer to the foregoing).
13. Cursory Remarks on the Importance of Agriculture, by W. Lamport, 1784.
14. A Political Enquiry into the Consequences of Enclosing Waste Lands,
Being the sentiments of a Society of Farmers in shire, 1785.
15. An Enquiry into the Influence which Enclosures have had upon the Popula-
tion of England, by John Howlett, 1786.
16. Cursory Remarks on Inclosures, etc., by a Country Farmer, 1786.
17. Enclosures a Cause of Improved Agriculture, etc., by John Howlett, 1787.
18. Suggestions for rendering the Inclosure of Common Fields and Waste
Lands a source of Population and Riches, by Thomas Stone, 1787.
An apparent exception is one of the most interesting works on the subject,
namely :
19. The Case of Labourers in Husbandry Stated and Considered, by David
Davies, 1795.
But the material was collected in 1787. The high prices of corn, 1765-74,
seem to have given an impulse to enclosures and produced a crop of literature.

304 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813

industrial changes and the operation of the Poor Law, were disas-
trous to a large number of open-field farmers, cottagers, and
commoners who had lost their hold upon the land. The strongest
argument against enclosures was the material and moral damage
inflicted upon the poor.

In comparatively rare instances commoners who exercised com-
mon-rights were not put to strict proof of their legal title. Even
where this lenient policy was adopted, or where the right was
established at law, the claim was often supposed to be satisfied by
the gift of a sum of money, or by an allotment of land. Money,
to a man who had no power of investment, was a precarious pro-
vision, which generally was soon spent. Land was a better sub-
stitute ; but the allotment might be too small to repay the cost of
fencing, or too distant to be of real benefit ; it was seldom enough
for the summer and winter keep of a cow. The land and the cow
were often sold together, as soon as, or sometimes before, the
award was made. Sometimes, again, legal principles were set
aside, and allotments of land, more or less inadequate, were made
for cottage building, or for the benefit of the poor of the parish
to supply pasture or fuel. But probably less than 5 per cent. of
the enclosure Acts made any provision of this kind.

The injury inflicted on the poor by the loss of their common of
pasture, whether legally exercised or not, was indisputably great.
It was admitted by those who, on other grounds, were the strongest
supporters of enclosures. Arthur Young himself, though he never
swerved from his advocacy of large enclosed holdings, had been
converted to the principle of an admixture of occupying ownerships
for small farmers. His travels in France had shown him the
“‘magic of property’ at work. In England he had witnessed its
effects in the Isle of Axholme. “In respect of property,” he
writes,! ‘‘I know nothing more singular respecting it, than its
great division in the isle of Axholm. In most of the towns there,
for it is not quite general, there is much resemblance of some rich
parts of France and Flanders. The inhabitants are collected in
villages and hamlets; and almost every house you see, except
very poor cottages on the borders of commons, is inhabited by a
farmer, the proprietor of his farm, of from four or five, and even
fewer, to twenty, forty, and more acres, scattered about the open-
fields, and cultivated with all that minutiz of care and anxiety, by

1 Lincolnshire (1799), p. 17.

COW-KEEPING ON COMMONS _ 305

the hands of the family, which are found abroad, in the countries
mentioned. They are very poor, respecting money, but very happy
respecting their mode of existence. Contrivance, mutual assist-
ance, by barter and hire, enable them to manage these little farms
though they break all the rules of rural proportion.”

On these lines, he urged in 1800! that every scrap of waste and
neglected land should be converted into possessions for the poor,
and that all labourers should be assigned gardens. and grass-land
for the keep of a cow. In 18012 he proposed that labourers should
be allowed to absorb for themselves the small commons which
were situated in the centre of enclosed districts, and that all Acts
of Parliament for the reclamation of wastes should attach enough
land to every cottage to provide summer and winter keep for a
cow, the land to be inalienable and vested in the parish. He
based these recommendations on his own personal observations of
the effect of the enclosure of commons. ‘‘ Many kept cows that
have not since” is his frequent summary of results. Out of 37
parishes, he found only 12 in which the poor had not suffered.
‘‘ By nineteen Enclosure Acts out of twenty, the poor are injured,
in some grossly injured. ... The poor in these parishes may
say, and with truth, Parliament may be tender of property; all I
know is I had a cow, and an Act of Parliament has taken it from
me.’ * The Board of Agriculture printed evidence to the same
effect.2 Out of 68 Enclosure Acts, 53 had injured the poor, who had
iost their cows, and could no longer buy milk for their families.
The same point is frequently noticed by the Reporters. Nathaniel
Kent, for example, dwells upon it in his Report on Norfolk, and
urges “all great farmers . . . to provide comfortable cottages for
two or three of their most industrious labourers, and to lay two or
three acres of grass land to each to enable such labourer to keep
a cow and a pig.”® Yet even when the opportunity to keep a
cow occurred, it was not invariably used. ‘‘ Cottagers,”’ says Kent,
“who live at the sides of the common generally neglect the advantage
they have before them. There is not, perhaps, one out of six,

1 Question of Scarcity plainly stated (1800).

2 Inquiry into the Propriety of applying Wastes to the better Maintenance
and Support of the Poor (1801).

3 Tbid. p 19. 4 Ibid. p. 42.
5 General Report on Enclosures, 1808, pp. 150-2.
® Kent’s Norfolk, p. 172.

U

306 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813

upon an average that keeps even a cow.” } Nor was the disappear-
ance of the cow invariably due to the loss of commons. Some-
times commercial motives operated. At Baldon, in Oxfordshire,
“many cottagers had two, three or four acres, and they kept
cows ; now, still having the land, they keep no cows; their rent
from 30s. to 42s. per acre and all applied as arable.’’? In this
instance, at all events, the cheapness of butter and the high price
of wheat had tempted these men to plough up their grass-land.

Whatever exceptions there may have been, the loss of the cow
generally followed the loss of the commons. Nor was this the only
injury which the cottager suffered. He lost his free firing, and the
run for his geese and poultry. It is, in fact, impossible to measure
in terms of cash equivalents the benefits derived from the commons,
or the loss inflicted by their withdrawal. The case is well sum-
marised by Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet of rural life :

Thomas (loq.) : Why, ’tis a handy thing
To have a bit 0’ common, I do know,
To put a little cow upon in spring,
The while woone’s bit ov orchard grass do grow.

John: Aye, that’s the thing, you zee. Now I do mow
My bit o’ grass, an méake a little rick ;
An’ in the zummer, while do grow,
My cow do run in common vor to pick
A bleade or two o’ grass, if she can vind em,
Vor tother cattle don’t leiive much behind em.
An’ then, bezides the cow, why we do let
Our geese run out among the emmet hills ;
An’ then, when we do pluck em, we do get
Vor zéale zome veithers an’ zome quills ;
An’ in the winter we do fat em well,
An’ car em to the market vor to zell
To gentle-volks. c : - 5
An’ then, when I ha’ nothén else to do,
Why, I can teike my hook an’ gloves, an’ goo
To cut a lot o’ vuzz and briars
Vor hetén ovens or vor lightén viers ;
An’ when the childern be too young to earn
A penny, they can g’out in zunny weather,
An’ run about, an’ get together
A bag o’ cow-dung vor to burn.

The material loss inflicted on the poor was great: still more
serious was the moral damage. It is probably true that the com-
mons had attracted to their borders numbers of the idle and
dissolute. But it is equally certain that they also afforded to
hard-working and thrifty peasants the means of supplementing

1 Hints to Gentlemen (1776), p. 112. 2 Young’s Oxfordshire, p. 23.

MORAL DAMAGE FROM LOSS OF COMMONS — 307

their weekly wages. They gave the man who enjoyed rights of
common, and lived near enough to use them, an interest in the
land and the hope of acquiring a larger interest. They encouraged
his thrift and fostered his independence. Men who had grazing
rights hoarded their money to buy a cow. They enabled wage-
earners to keep live-stock, which was something of their own.
They gave them fuel, instead of driving them to the baker for
every sort of cooking. They formed the lowest rung in the social
ladder, by which the successful commoner might hope to climb to
the occupation of a holding suited to his capital. Now the com-
mons were gone, and the farms which replaced them were too
large to be attainable. Contemporary writers who comment on
the increasing degradation of the labouring classes too often treat
as its causes changes which were really its consequences. They
note the increase of drunkenness, but forget that the occupation
of the labourer’s idle moments was gone; they attack the mis-
chievous practice of giving children tea, but forget that milk was
no longer procurable; they condemn the rising generation as
incapable for farm labour, but forget that the parents no longer
occupied land on which their children could learn to work; they
deplore the helplessness of the modern wives of cottagers who had
become dependent on the village baker, but forget that they were
now obliged to buy flour, and had lost their free fuel ; they denounce
their improvident marriages, but forget that the motive of thrift
was removed. The results were the hopelessness, the indifference,
and the moral deterioration of the landless labourer. ‘“‘ Go,” says
Arthur Young, “ to an ale-house kitchen of an old enclosed country,
and there you will see the origin of poverty and the poor-rates.
For whom are they to be sober? For whom are they to save ?
(such are their questions). For the parish? If I am diligent,
shall I have leave to build a cottage? If I am sober, shall I have
land for a cow? If I am frugal, shall I have half an acre of
potatoes ? You offer no motives; you have nothing but a parish
officer and a workhouse. Bring me another pot.’?! The same
point is urged, with less vivacity and picturesqueness of statement,
by the best writers of the day, especially by Howlett and Davies.
The displacement of numbers of cottagers, commoners, and open-
field farmers came at a difficult crisis. Hitherto rural labourers
in many parts of the country had regarded day work for wages

1 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxxvi. p. 508. On Wastes (1801), pp. 12, 13.

308 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813

on the land of farmers as a by-employment, which eked out the
profits of their other industries. Now the commons were gone,
and at the same time their own domestic handicrafts were being
superseded by manufactured goods. It was now that the industrial
population was shifting from the South to the North ; that spinning
and weaving deserted the home for the factory ; that old markets
were exchanged for the new centres of trade which gathered round
the water-power or the coal and iron fields of the North. In the
closing years of the eighteenth century, widespread complaints
are made of decaying industries, of the loss of employment in rural
districts, of the mass of pauperism bequeathed to small towns
and villages by the departure of trades.

Industries, which in 1800 were concentrating in the large towns
of the North, had been previously scattered over a wide extent of
country districts. Even where the trade maintained its ground,
the introduction of machinery reduced the amount of employment,
and transferred it from the cottage to the factory. At the same
time many local manufactories were brought to the verge of ruin
by the war, which limited the export trade. As the result of these
changes in the conditions of rural life, poor-rates rose to an enormous
height. Marshall, in his Review of the Reports to the Board of
Agriculture, mentions the instance of Coggeshall in Essex, once a
flourishing village, where the poor-rates, owing to the ruin of the
baize trade, had risen to 16s. in the pound. This burden, increased
as it was by the provision for the maintenance of the wives and
families of militiamen, enlisted soldiers and sailors, crushed out of
existence many small freeholders, who, because they employed no
labour, derived no advantage from the operation of the Poor Law,
but were assessed on the rental value of their land. As the local
industries declined, or were concentrated in towns, or substituted
machinery for manual work, the demand for labour was reduced
in rural villages. Fewer opportunities for supplementing weekly
wages by other employments were afforded. It was now that the
South and South Midlands fell hopelessly behind the North.

It is difficult to give any adequate impression of the degree in
which, under the dying system of self-contained communities, indus-
trial employments other than those of agriculture had been distri-
buted among rural villages. Counties which at first sight seem
purely agricultural, possessed a number of local industries, which,
in addition to dyeworks, malthouses, breweries, mills, and tanneries,

LOCAL INDUSTRIES AND HOME CRAFTS 309

gave considerable employment. Bedfordshire had its osier baskets,
its reed matting, its straw plaiting ; its spinning of hemp had died
out in 1803, but men as well as women still made pillow lace. Straw-
plaiting extended along the borders of Buckinghamshire, Hertford-
shire, and Cambridgeshire. The best, that is, the weakest straw,
commanded high prices, and sold for from 2d. to 4d. the pound. In
Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, woollen and worsted yarn
was also spun for Norwich and the northern markets. Lincolnshire
wove fabrics for women’s dresses; Epworth made sack-cloth ;
coarse linen or hempen cloth was woven in many parts of the
county. Suffolk had its spinning and combing of wool ; and in the
district round Beccles, where hemp was largely cultivated, quantities
of hempen cloth were manufactured. Essex was famous for its
baizes. But the trade was for the time ruined by the war. In the
neighbourhood of Colchester, where during peace 20,000 persons had
found: employment, only 8,000 were now employed. At Halstead,
Dedham, Bocking, and the surrounding villages, the industry had so
decayed that numbers of hands were out of work, and the rates rose
to over 20s. in the pound.
Hampshire was not a manufacturing county. But it had a
variety of industries ranging from manufactories of cloth, shalloons
and coarse woollens, to bed-ticking and earthenware pottery. Kent
was the county of hops; yet Canterbury and the villages round
wove silk ; Dover and Maidstone made paper; Crayford bleached
linens and printed calicoes; Whitstable had its copperas works,
Sandwich its salt-works, Faversham and Deptford their powder
mills. Along the banks of the Wandle in Surrey were paper, oil,
snuff and flour mills, mills for grinding logwood, as well as leather,
parchment, calico, and printing works. The Mole turned iron mills
at Cobham and flatting mills at Ember Court. The Wey collected
on its banks many paper mills. In the Weald there still lingered
iron-workers and charcoal burners. Godalming and the neighbour-
hood had its patent fleecy hosiery, its works for wool-combing, for
blankets, tilts, and collar-cloths. Sussex formerly sent every year
quantities of iron by land-carriage to London; but the trade was
dying fast. It still remained one of the chief centres of the charcoal
industry and of powder making. In Berkshire the woollen manu-
factures were dwindling. They were deserting Newbury, leaving
behind a “ numerous poor.” But in the town and neighbourhood,
kerseys, cottons, calicoes, linen and damask were still made, and the

310 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813

introduction of the manufacture of blankets was attempted. At
Oakingham there were established silk-spinning and silk-weaving
manufactories, and a considerable trade was carried on in hat-bands,
ribbons, watch-strings, shoe-strings, sarcenets, and figured gauzes
for women’s dresses. In Oxfordshire the shag-weavers of Bloxham
and Banbury were out of employment and on the parish. The
coarse velvet trade of Banbury was travelling north. The blankets
of Witney still held their own; but the introduction of machinery
had thrown two-thirds of the workmen out of employment, and the
rates had risen to 11s. in the pound. The glove trade of Woodstock
flourished ; but the polished steel trade had migrated to Birmingham
and Sheffield, and leathern breeches, no longer worn, had ceased to
be made.

Northampton and the surrounding neighbourhood were already
famous for boots; Daventry manufactured whips and wove silk
stockings ; in Wellingborough and the surrounding villages lace-
making employed from 9,000 to 10,000 persons, the thread being
imported from Flanders and distributed to the workers in their
houses. Since the war, the worsted manufactories of Kettering
had decayed ; instead of from 5,000 to 6,000 hands, only half were
employed, and the remainder fell upon the rates. Warwickshire,
Nottinghamshire, and Staffordshire were becoming manufacturing
counties. Machinery was being introduced, and, as a consequence,
their industries were being withdrawn from the villages and con-
centrated in towns. Outside Birmingham, there were the ribbon
and tammy trades of Coventry, the horn combs of Kenilworth, the
nails of Bromwich, the needles of Alceste1.’the worsted works of
Warwick, the linen trade of Tamworth. For miles round Notting-
ham the villagers were stocking-makers ; in different parts of the
county were scattered mills for combing and spinning wool, or
silk spinning and weaving, for polishing marble, as well as works
for the manufacture of pottery, starch, and sail-cloth. Few cottagers
were without a web of home-spun cloth. Shropshire had a great
variety of local industries, such as garden pots at Broseley ; fine
china at Caughley ; china, ropes, and chains at Coalport; glass
works at Donnington ; dye-works at Lebotwood ; Shrewsbury and
the neighbourhood maintained spinning and fulling mills, a trade in
finishing Welsh flannels, manufactures of coarse linens and linen
threads. In many cottages and farm-houses pieces of linen cloth
were got up for sale. The glove trade of Worcester employed a

CLOTH TRADE IN THE SOUTH-WEST 311

large number of men and women in the city itself, and in the “ county
round to the extent of seven or eight miles.’ Kidderminster and
the neighbourhood were carpet-makers. On the borders of Stafford-
shire and Warwickshire many were employed in making nails,
needles, and fish-hooks.

Over the greater part of Gloucestershire, and especially in the
Cotswold Hills, there was much spinning of wool. The trade in
the fine broad-cloths of Stroud and the surrounding parishes was in
1794 at a stand-still ; but in the coarser quality required for army
clothing it was brisk. Even here the introduction of machinery
“‘ has thrown many hands out of employment,” and caused the poor-
rates to rise “to six shillings in the pound and upward.” At
Cirencester in 1807 many labouring people were still employed in
sorting wool from the fleece ; but the wool trade had much decreased
in the last forty years, as also spinning woollen yarn and worsted
since the introduction of machinery. Tewkesbury had its stocking-
frame industry ; Dursley and Wotton-under-Edge made wire cards
for the use of clothiers ; iron and brass wire, tin-plate, pins, rugs
and blankets employed other districts of the county. But the
decline of trade made itself felt in the great increase of rates. “In
the clothing district,” says Rudge, ‘“‘ the weight of parochial assess-
ments falls uncommonly heavy on landed property. During the late
scarcity, the average charge might be 4s. 6d. through the county ;
while at the same time it amounted to at least three times that
proportion in some of the parishes where the clothing manufacture
is carried on.’?! In Somersetshire, the trade in woollen cloth and
worsted stockings of Frome and Shepton Mallet had given employ-
ment, not only to the two towns, but to “ a vast number of the lower
order of people in the adjacent villages.” But in 1797 the restriction
of the export trade by the war, the introduction of machinery, and
the competition of the North, had begun to injure the trade and
lessen the demand for labour. Taunton had lost its woollen
manufactures, though they still flourished at Wellington and
Wiveliscombe.

In Cornwall, carding and spinning were in 1811 dying out, and
““ to the total decline of this business must, in some measure, be attri-
buted the progressive increase of the rates of the county.” ? From
Devonshire in 1808 came the same complaint of the failure of em-

1 Gloucestershire (1807), p. 346.
2 Worgan’s Cornwall (1811), p. 33,

312 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813

ployment, though in the eastern part of the county lace-making still
flourished. In Dorsetshire the principal manufactures were in the
neighbourhood of Bridport and Beaminster, where in 1793, “all
sorts of twine, string, packthread, netting, cordage, and ropes are
made, from the finest thread used by saddlers, in lieu of silk, to
the cable which holds the first-rate man of war.”? In this neigh-
bourhood also were made the sails for shipping, sacking for ham-
mocks, and all kinds of bags and tarpaulin. Here too were braided
nets for the Newfoundland fishery and for home use. At Loders
sail-cloth was woven. At Shaftesbury and Blandford, and in the
surrounding villages on all sides, to seven or eight miles distance,
was carried on the manufacture of shirt-buttons.

Two other changes were in progress which in a minor degree
added to the misfortunes of the labouring classes in country districts.
In the first place, trade in agricultural produce was rapidly becoming |
wholesale instead of retail. Dairy-farms contracted for the supply
of milk to towns, and milk was more easily obtained by the urban
than the rural population. The produce of corn-farms was sold in
bulk to corn-dealers or millers. Labourers could rarely purchase a
bushel of wheat direct from the farmer. They could no longer
carry their corn to the miller, pay for grinding, and take away the
pure flour, and the offals for the pigs. Now they were obliged to buy
from the miller or the baker, not only the flour, but the bran, with
the profits of each trader added to the price of both. In the second
place, a number of crops, some of which required much labour for
their cultivation or special preparation, were dying out, because
the industries which they served had migrated, or from some change
of taste or fashion. As the linen trade became more concentrated
in particular localities, flax was more rarely cultivated. The hemp-
yards, which were once attached to many cottages and farm-houses,
were similarly abandoned. The use of teasels by clothiers was
displaced by machinery, and the crop was no longer cultivated.
Woad, madder, and saffron found cheaper substitutes. Liquorice
disappeared from Nottinghamshire, camomile from Derbyshire,
canary seed from Kent, carraway seed from Essex.

The rapid increase in the price of provisions from 1793 onwards
struck yet another, and a crushing, blow at the position of the land-
less labourer. The rise came with startling suddenness, and it

1 Vancouver’s Devonshire (1808), p. 464.
2 Claridge’s Dorsetshire (1793), p. 37.

RISE IN AGRICULTURAL WAGES 313

found him defenceless. Without the commons he was entirely
dependent on purchased food ; without domestic industries he had
less money to buy the means of existence. The greater the distance
from London, the lower the wages and the higher the prices. This
was certainly true of the West and South-West of England. Thus,
the labourer had more to buy, less money to buy it with, and what
money he had did not go so far as formerly. In yet another way,
the great rise in prices affected the rural population for the worse.
It no longer paid the farmer to board servants in husbandry. In the
North, the system still survived, partly because of the high wages of
day-labour, partly because the diet which custom accepted was more
economical, and barley-broth and porridge were staple foods.
Elsewhere the number of servants who were boarded and lodged
in farm-houses dwindled ; they became day-labourers, living how
and where they could. Another opportunity for saving and another
restraint on improvident marriage were thus removed.

To a certain extent the rise in the prices was met by a substantial
advance in wages. It is always easy to raise wages ; it is extremely
difficult to lower them. The reluctance of farmers to increase wages,
when an advance in prices may be only temporary, is therefore
intelligible. How far wages rose is a difficult field of enquiry. The
remuneration of labour varies with the different seasons, with the
different occupations of the men, with different contracts of service,
with different districts of the same county. The one outstanding
point is that the real earnings of agricultural labourers are not now,
and, to a greater extent, were not then, represented only by the
weekly sums which are paid in cash. To these weekly payments
must be added earnings at piece-work, at hay and corn harvest,
perquisites, allowances in kind, cottages and gardens, either rent
free or rented below their economic value. On these points the
Reports to the Board of Agriculture, 1793-1815, supply no reliable
evidence. Most of them speak of a considerable rise in wages ;
they rarely mention the point from which the advance is
measured. They register the averages of the daily or weekly
payments; they seldom give the method by which the rate is
calculated.

Failing the Reports to the Board of Agriculture, the enquirer is
thrown back on Young’s generalisations. As the result of his
calculations in the Farmers’ Tours of 1767-70, it may be estimated
that the average rate of wages was Is. 2d. a day,—more in the

314 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813

neighbourhood of London, less in more distant counties, least in the
West and South. From 1770 to 1790 there does not seem to have
been any appreciable and general rise. In the next twenty-five
years a striking advance was made. Tooke states that agricultural
wages were “doubled or nearly so.’’! Young calculated that,
taking the “‘ mean rate” of wages in 1770 at 7s. 44d., the “ price
of labour had in forty years about doubled.”? Both he and
Tooke state that the wages of agricultural labourers had reached
the level of those of artisans. It is difficult to accept these
estimates. Few of the Reports to the Board of Agriculture
really belong to the later part of the period 1793-1815, and the
only county in which the Reporters to the Board state that wages
had doubled between 1794 and 1812 is Warwickshire. In Essex,
however, there is some indication of wages having doubled, if the
ls. 2d. of 1770 is taken as the starting-point. In the Report for
1794, the average of summer and winter wages is given as 9s. 14d. a
week ; in that for 1807, at 12s. 7d. The evidence of the subsequent
rise comes from another source. On an Essex farm the rate of
wages paid to an ordinary labourer, who had not the care of stock,
rose from 10s. 6d. a week in 1800 to 12s. a week in 1802, and to 15s.
a week in 1812.3. Whatever weight may be attached to the general-
isations of Tooke and Young, it is certain that a very important
advance in agricultural wages was made during the period of the
Napoleonic wars. Unfortunately, it is equally certain that, even

1 History of Prices, vol. i. p. 329.

2 Enquiry into the Rise of Prices in Europe during the last twenty-five years
(1815), p. 215.

3 Board of Trade Report on Agricultural Wages (1900), Cd. 346, p. 238. In
the Communications to the Board of Agriculture (vol. v. part i.), the average
weekly wages of agricultural labourers in 1803 are stated at lls. lld. In
Arthur Young’s Enquiry into the Rise of Prices in Europe, the weekly wages in
husbandry are stated to be 14s. 6d.in 1811. J.C. Curwen, M.P., moving in the
House of Commons for a Committee to consider the Poor Laws (May 28,
1816), speaks of agricultural wages at that time as ranging from 10s. to 15s.
(Pamphleteer, vol. viii. p. 9). A. H. Holdsworth, M.P. (Letter on the Present
Situation of the Country (1816), Pamphleteer, vol. viii. p. 428), speaks of agri-
cultural labourers receiving 2s. 6d. a day before the reductions of 1814. William
Clarkson (Inquiry into the Poor Rates (1816), Pamphleteer, vol. viii. p. 392) gives
the average rate of wages in 1812 at 15s.; but thinks that as wages are much
less in Wiltshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, this figure is over-stated as an
average.

It is not suggested that this class of evidence is at all conclusive; but it
leaves the impression that, if agricultural wages in 1760 averaged 7s., they had
approximately doubled in 1812 in many parts of the country, and that the
average rise cannot be put at less than two-thirds,

IF WAGES DOUBLED, FOOD-PRICES TREBLED 315

if wages had doubled, the price of provisions had trebled. In other
words, effective earnings had diminished by a third. It is the
suddenness of this advance in prices that explains, though it does
not justify, the makeshift expedients for relief which were adopted
by administrators of the Poor Law.

CHAPTER XV.

AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION AND THE POOR LAW.
1813-37.

War taxation: peace and beggary ; slow recovery of agriculture ; the harvest
of 1813; reality and extent of distress; the fall of prices; bankruptcies
of tenant-farmers; period of acute depression, 1814-36; ruin of small
owners ; misery of agricultural labourers ; reduction in wages and scarcity
of employment; allowances from the rates; general pauperisation: the
new Poor Law, 1834, and its administration.

ENGLAND in 1815 had emerged from the Napoleonic wars victorious.
But she paid the price of victory in her huge National Debt, her
excessive taxation, her enormous Poor-Rate, her fictitious credit,
her mass of unemployed and discontented labour. Though it is
estimated that one in every six male adults was engaged in the
struggle by land or sea, the population of England and Wales had
risen from under 8? millions in 1792 to about 10} millions in 1815.
Within the same period the National Debt grew from £261,735,059
to £885,186,323, and the annual expenditure, including interest
on the public debt, from under 20 millions to £106,832,260.1 The
wealth and resources of the nation are shown by the comparative
ease with which the money was found and the increased burden met.
Yet the strain of the struggle had been intense, and on no class had
it told more severely than on agricultural labourers. If their
wages had approximately doubled, the cost of living had nearly
trebled. Of their distress the rise of the expenditure on poor-relief
affords evidence. It advanced from £1,912,241,2 which was the

1 Porter’s Progress of the Nation (1847), p. 482.

2 Eden’s State of the Poor, vol. i. pp. 363-72. In 1776 the expenditure had
been £1,556,804. After 1785 no Returns were made till 1803, when poor-rates
stood at £4,077,891. See Local Taxation Returns printed by order of the House
of Commons, 1839. To the sums assessed and disbursed in relief of the poor
must be added the annual sums derived from charities appropriated to the
same object. These amounted, apart from educational charities, to £1,209,395

PEACE AND BEGGARY uy 317

triennial average for 1783-4-5, to £5,418,845 in 1815. Nor did the
expenditure cease to rise with the close of the war. It continued
to increase, in spite of falling prices. In 1818 it had grown to
£7,870,801, the highest point which it reached under the old law.
For six years after the end of the war the proverbial association
of ‘“‘ Peace and Plenty ” proved a ghastly mockery to all classes of
the community. To agriculturists peace brought only beggary. In
the first rush of complaint, some allowance must be made for dis-
appointment at the immediate results of the end of the war. But
the evidence of commercial depression was real and widespread.
The disordered state of the currency continued to injure credit, to
disturb trade, to create wild speculation instead of sound business.
The labour market was glutted. Discharged sailors, soldiers, and
militiamen swelled the ranks of the unemployed. The store,
transport, and commissariat departments were put on a peace
footing. Industries to which the war had given a feverish activity
languished. Thousands of spinners, combers, and hand-loom
weavers were thrown out of work by the increased introduction of
machinery into manufacturing processes. Continental ports were
once more opened to English trade; but money was scarce, and
foreign merchandise excluded by heavy customs duties. It was soon
found that home manufactures had exceeded the demand. Ware-
houses were overloaded, markets overstocked. Produce was-unsold,
or unpaid for, or bought at prices unremunerative to the-producers.
Only with America was increased business done. The growing
imports of raw cotton were paid for by exports of British goods.
After 1821 the commercial depression began to disperse. Difficul-
ties of the currency had been, to some extent, adjusted ; credit and
confidence were reviving. Progress was for a time suspended by
the financial crash of 1825. But the interruption was temporary.
Trade improved, at first slowly, then rapidly. Agriculture recovered
more gradually ; for a protracted period it endured an almost _
unexampled..misery. Landlords, tenant-farmers, and_ labourers
suffered together. It was not till 1836 that any gleam of returning
12s. 8d.ayear. (See Report of the Charity Commissioners, 1842.) No estimate
can be formed of the additional sums annually contributed by the charitable.
The great increase in the Poor Rate cannot be wholly attributed to an increase

in the number of paupers. It was largely due to the greater cost of provisions
and to more lax administration. See Appendix II.

1 Nicholl’s History of the Poor Law, ed. H. G. Willink (1898), vol. ii. p. 165,
and Porter’s Progress of the Nation (ed. 1847), p. 527.

—EE

— =

feel me

I

—~—

318 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION AND POOR LAW

prosperity. appeared. During the war, farming improvements had
been stimulated by the prospect of increased profits: In peace, when
once the new conditions were accepted, and some degree of confidence
restored, adversity proved an efficient goad. Without improved
practices there was no prospect of any profits at all. Yet down to
the accession of Queen Victoria there is no substantial progress to
chronicle. The characteristics of the period are a great loss of
ground and a partial recovery.

The inflated prices of the war had conferred, from one point of
view, a great advantage on the agriculture of the country. They
brought under the plough districts which, but for their stimulus,
might never have been brought into cultivation,—areas that were
forced into productiveness by the sheer weight of the metal that was
poured into them. Money made by farming had been eagerly
reinvested in the improvement of the land. For the same purpose

' banks had advanced money to occupiers on the security of crops

and stock which every year seemed to rise in value. Farmers had

_ been able to meet their engagements out of loans, and wait their own

time for realising their produce. Better horses were kept, better
cattle and sheep bred. Land was limed, marled, or manured.
Wastes were brought under cultivation; large areas were cleared
of stones in order to give an arable surface ; heaths were cleared,
bogs drained, buildings erected, roads constructed. The history of
Northumberland strongly illustrates these brighter aspects of a
gloomy period. John Grey of Dilston,! ‘“‘ the Black Prince of the
North,” one of the most enterprising and skilful agriculturists of the
day, played a conspicuous part in the transformation of his county.
Born in 1785, and early called through the death of his father to the
management of property, he lived in the midst of the agricultural
revolution. When his father first settled in Glendale, the plain was
a forest of wild broom. He took his axe, and, like a backwoodsman,
cleared a space on which to begin his farming operations. The
country was then wholly unenclosed, without roads or signposts.
Cattle were lost for days in the broom forests. The inhabitants
were as wild as their home,—the Cheviot herdsmen ‘“‘ ferocious and
sullen,” the rural population “‘ uneducated, ill-clothed, and barbar-
ous.” But the character of the soil was such as to attract skill and
industry. Men of the same stamp as Grey, or the Culleys, settled
in the fertile vales, and by their spirited farming transformed into
1 Memoirs of John Grey of Dilston, by Josephine E. Butler (1869).

RAPID FALL IN PRICES _ 319

cultivated land wide districts, like the rich valley of the Till, which
before the period of war prices were wildernesses of underwood.
Between-1813 and the accession of Queen. Victoria falls one of the
blackest periods of English farming. Prosperity no longer stimu-
lated progress. Except in a few districts, falling prices, dwindling
rents, vanishing profits did not even rouse the energy of despair.
The growing demoralisation of both employers and employed, which
resulted from the administration of the Poor Law, crushed the
spirit of agriculturists. ‘‘ Many horses die while the grass is grow-
ing.” The menwho survived the struggle were rarely the old
owners or the old.occupiers. They were. rather their.fortunate
successors who. entered: onthe business. of land-cultivation.on more
favourable terms. Prices.had-begun to fall with the abundant
harvest of 1813. The suddenness of the decline is illustrated from
the contracts made on behalf of the Royal Navy. At Portsmouth
in January, 1813, the price paid for wheat was 123s. 10d., in Novem-
ber, 67s.10d. In February, 1813, at Deptford, flour was contracted
for at 100s. 3d. per sack, in November, at 65s.1 This rapid fall
could not-at-that_time have been due to any prospect_of. peace:
It was rather.due-to-over-production, which the House of Commons
Committee on the Corn Trade (1814) found to have increased. within
the last ten years by a fourth. Besides.English corn, Scottish and
Trish.corn- were-in the market. Since 1806 Irish grain had_been
admitted into the country free, and it poured into the..western
counties_in.considerable- quantities. Deficient harvests in 1809-10-
11-12 had concealed the potential yield of the increased area under
corn ;. its full productive power stood revealed by the favourable
season of 1813. The two following harvests, 1814 and 1815, were
not above the average ; but prices of wheat dropped to 74s. 4d.
and 65s. 7d. per quarter respectively. As compared with 1812,
the actual receipts of farmers diminished by one hundred millions,
and the value of the farming stock was reduced by nearly one-
half. The evidence of widespread distress is ample.? But it is
1 Speech of Chas. C. Western, M.P., on moving that the House should resolve
itself into a Committee of the Whole House to take into Consideration the Dis-

tressed State of the Agriculture of the United Kingdom, March 7, 1816 (Pamph-
leteer, vol. vii. p. 508).

2 H.g. 1. A Review of the present Ruined Condition of the Landed and Agri-
cultural Interests, etc., by R. Preston, M.P. (1813).
2. Letters on the Distressed State of Agriculturists, by R. Brown (1816).
3. Further Observations on the State of the Nation, etc., by R. Preston, M.P.
(1816).

320 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION AND POOR LAW

improbable that its extent was understated. Agricultural witnesses
and writers were anxious, not only to prevent any relaxation of the
Corn Laws, but, if possible, to increase their stringency. The
depression, therefore, ‘‘ lost nothing in the telling,” though its depth
and reality remain unquestionable. Brougham, speaking on
agricultural distress in the House of Commons, April 9, 1816, said :
‘“There is one branch of the argument which I shall pass over
altogether, I mean the amount of the distresses which are now
universally admitted to prevail over almost every part of the Empire.
Upon this topic all men are agreed ; the statements concerning it
are as unquestionable as they are afflicting . . . and the petition
from Cambridgeshire presented at an early part of this evening, has
laid before you a fact, to which all the former expositions of distress
afforded no parallel, that in one parish, every proprietor and tenant
being ruined with a single exception, the whole poor-rates of the
parish, thus wholly inhabited by paupers, are now paid by an
individual whose fortune, once ample, is thus swept entirely
away. 1

With wheat standing at over 60s. a quarter, it is difficult to realise
that the landed interests could be distressed, and it might be supposed
that farmers had made enough in prosperous times to tide over a
period of depression. But though the rise in prices had been-enor-

4, On the State of the Country in December 1816, by the Rt. Hon. Sir John
Sinclair (1816).

5. Agricultural State of the Kingdom in February, March, and April, 1816.
Being the Substance of the Replies to a Circular Letter sent by the Board of
Agriculture (1816).

6. An Inquiry into the Causes of Agricultural Distress, by W. Jacob, F.R.S.
(1817).

7. Observations on the Present State of Pawperism in England, by the Rev.
George Glover (1817).

8. Speech of J. C. Curwen, M.P., in the House of Commons on May 28th,
1816, on a Motion for a Committee to take into Consideration the State of
the Poor Laws (1816). ;

9. Two Letters on the Present Situation of the Country, by A. H. Holdsworth,
M.P. (1816).

10. Letters on the Present State of the Agricultural Interest, by the Rev. Dr.
Crombie (1816).

11. On Famine and the Poor Laws, by W. Richardson, D.D. (1816).

12. An Inquiry into Pauperism and Poor Rates, by William Clarkson (1816).

13. Observations . . . on the Condition of the Labouring Classes, by John
Barton (1817).

14. Inquiry into the Causes of the Progressive Depreciation of Agricultural
Labour, by the Same (1820).

1 ** Speech on Agricultural Distress.’ Speeches of Henry, Lord Brougham,
vol. i. pp. 503-4 (1838).

HEAVY TAXATION OF LAND a 321

mous, the increase _in public burdens had more. than kept. pace.
During the ten years ending in 1792, the average price of wheat had
been 47s. per quarter; the national expenditure under twenty
millions a year ; the poor-rate less than 1? millions ; there was also
no property tax. During the ten years ending in 1812, wheat
averaged 88s. a quarter. While wheat had thus not quite doubled,
wages had risen by two-thirds; the national expenditure had |
multiplied five-fold ; tithes had increased by more than a fourth ; |
a property tax had ‘bbe imposed on owners and occupiers of land.
The poor-rate had quadrupled ; the county-rate had risen seven- |
fold ; the permissive charge of 6d. in the pound for the road material |
of highways had been of late years habitually levied. A very large |
proportion of this public burden was borne by agriculturists. Upon |
the landed interests fell more than half the new property tax,)|
the greater part of the county-, poor-, and highway-rates, the war)
duties on hops and malting barley, the tax on agricultural horses, |
and an exceptional share of the tax on leather, which swelled the
cost of every kind of harness gear. Thus the rise of the price of
agricultural produce was to a great extent discounted by the growth
of taxation, and it was the war, not the Corn Laws, which had given
agricultural producers the monopoly of home markets.

In other respects circumstances were exceptional. During the
war, the social advantages of landownership and its apparently
remunerative character, as well as the large fortunes realised in
recent trade, combined to give land a fancy value. New capitalists
gratified both their ambitions and their speculative instincts by

a

1The Property Tax for 1814 produced Gross £15,325,720, and Net
£14,545,279. It was made up thus :
Sched. A (lands, tenements and hereditaments) £4,297,247

Sched. B (occupiers of land) - - - 2,176,228
Tax on houses - - - - - 1,625,939
Total - - - - - - - - £8,099,414
Sched. C, Funded property - - - £3,004,861
Sched. D, Profits on Trades and Peo feasiond - 3,021,187
Sched. E, Naval, military, and civil lists -
together with provincial offices - . 1,113,244
Total - - - - - - - £7,139,292
Supplementary accounts, duties, penalties, etc. 87,014
Total - - - - - - - £15,325,720

This tax was repealed in 1816. The number of agricultural occupiers
contributing to the property tax under Sched. B was 474,596, as against
152,926 assessed under Sched. D.

x

of

322 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION AND POOR LAW

becoming purchasers. ‘Their biddings forced existing owners into
ruinous competition ; they mortgaged their ancestral acres to buy
up outlying properties or round off their boundaries. As much as
forty-five years’ purchase was given for purely agricultural land.
The same spirit of competition prompted farmers to offer extravagant
rents for land. Farms were put up to auction, and the tenancy fell
to the highest bidder. The more prudent had left business in 1806.
Many of the new men entered on their holdings with insufficient or
borrowed capital. Money was still made in farming ; but, instead
of being realised, it was put back into the land, where, so long as

_prices rose, or were even maintained, it proved a profitable invest-

ment. Among all classes, including landowners and farmers, a
higher standard of living prevailed. Country mansions had been
built, rebuilt, or enlarged, and costly improvements effected in the
equipment of farms,—often by means of loans; heavy jointures
and portions had been charged on estates ; farmers and their wives
had either altered their simpler habits, or brought with them into
their new business more luxurious modes of life. The whole fabric
rested on the continuance of the war-prices. When these began to
fall, the crash came. Profits were reduced by a half; burdens
remained the same. Tenants-at-will could at least quit their hold-
ings. But tenants occupying under long leases found themselves
in a difficult position. Landlords could not meet their liabilities,
unless their rents were maintained ; without reductions of rent, the
bankruptcy of their tenants seemed inevitable.

In the period 1814-16 the agricultural industry passed suddenly
from prosperity to extreme depression. At first farmers met their
engagements out of capital. When that was exhausted, their only
resource was to sell their corn as soon as it was threshed, or their
stock, for what it would fetch. The great quantity of grain thus
thrown on the market in a limited time lowered prices for producers,
and the subsequent advance, which benefited only the dealers,
suggested to landlords that no reductions of rent were necessary.
Farms were thrown up; notices to quit poured in; numbers of.
tenants absconded. Large tracts of land were untenanted and
often uncultivated. In 1815 three thousand acres in a small district
gf Huntingdonshire were abandoned, and nineteen farms inthe Isle
of Ely were without tenants. Bankers pressed for their advances,
landlords for their rents, tithe-owners for their tithe, tax-collectors
for their taxes, tradesmen for their bills. Insolvencies, composi-

RUIN OF MANY FARMERS W — 323

tions, executions, seizures, arrests and imprisonments_ for debt
multiplied. Farmhouses were full of sheriffs’ officers. Many large
farmers lost everything, and became applicants for pauper allowances.
Even in Norfolk the number of writs and executions rose from 636
in 1814 to 844 in 1815; in Suffolk from 430 to 850; in Worcester
from 640 to 890. In the Isle of Ely the number of arrests and
executions increased from 57 in 1812-13 to 263 in 1814-15. In the
same district several farmers failed for an aggregate sum of £72,500,
and the creditors in hardly any instance received a dividend.
Between 1815 and 1820, 52 farmers, cultivating between them 24,000
acres, failed in Dorsetshire. Agricultural improvements were at
a.stand-still. Live-stock was reduced toa minimum. Lime-kilns
ceased to burn ; less manure was used on the land ; the least possible
amount of labour was employed. The tradesmen, innkeepers, and
shopkeepers of country towns suffered heavily by the loss of custom.
Blacksmiths, wheelwrights, collar makers, harness makers, carpenters,
found no work. At_first the depression had been chiefly felt in
corn-growingdistriets, especially on heavy land. But by 1816 it
had spread to mixed and grass farms. In that year, bad seasons
created a temporary scarcity ; the rise of wheat to the old prices
aggravated rural distress without helping any persons except dealers,
and the wealthier farmers who could afford to wait; the potato
crop, which had recently become important in England, failed ;
perpetual floods in the spring and summer were succeeded by a
winter of such unusual severity, that the loss of sheep in the North
was enormous. Landlords, whose land was thrown upon their
hands, or who had laid charges on their estates, found themselves
confronted with ruin. The alternative was hard. If the mortgagee
foreclosed, the estate sold for a sum which barely recouped the
charges. Preston,! in 1816, states that ‘‘in Norfolk alone landed
property to the value of one million and a half is on sale, without.
buyers for want of money.’ One property, for which ‘“ £140,000
was offered two years ago, is now on sale at £80,000.” In a second
pamphlet? he states that ‘‘ some of the best estates of the kingdom
are selling at a depreciation of £50 per cent. One of the finest grass
farms in Somersetshire sold lately at 10 years purchase.” “ There

1 Review of the Present Ruined Condition of the Agricultural and Landed
Interests, by Richard Preston, M.P. (1816), (Pamphileteer, vol. vii. pp. 149,
167).

2 Further Observations on the State of the Nation (1816), (Pamphleteer, vol.
ix. p. 127.)

324 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION AND POOR LAW

are now estates,” says Glover,! “‘ in the most fertile parts of England,
nay even within 50 miles of London, which are an absolute loss
to the possessor.” The natural reluctance of landlords to lower
rents may have involved tenants in their fall; but by 1816
they are stated to have lost 9 millions a year by rent reductions
alone.?.

For the next twenty years the same record of depression is con-
tinued. The attention of Parliament was continually called to
the distress of the landed interests. Petitions covered the table of
the House ; innumerable pamphlets and letters demanded remunera-
ting prices for agricultural produce. Some exaggeration there
probably was, for the struggle of Free Trade against Protection had
begun. But the account which has been given of farming conditions
in the years 1814-16 was substantially confirmed by numerous
witnesses who gave evidence on the continuance of the distress
before a series of Select Committees in 1820, 1821, 1822, 1833, and
1836. Rural conditions were deplorable. Even as late as 1833, it
was stated that, in spite of rent reductions, which in Sussex amounted
to 53 per cent., there was scarcely a solvent tenant in the Wealds of
Sussex and Kent, and that many farmers, having lost all they had,
were working on the roads. Violent fluctuations in prices _con-
tinued _to overthrow all calculations; the wheat area alternately
expanded and contracted ; the sliding scale of 1829, soon exploited
for their own profit by foreign importers, only increased the specu-

lative character of the agricultural industry. On heavy clays less
capital and less labour were expended; wet seasons prevented

1 Observations on the Present State of Pawperism in England, by the Rev. G.
Glover (Pamphleteer, vol. x. p. 384).

2 If this statement is correct, it approximately restored the rental of land in
Great Britain to the figure at which it stood in 1806. In that year a sub-
division for the first time was made of the classes of property the income of
which was assessed under Schedule A to the Property Tax.

Annual Income from 1806 1814

1. Property from Lands - - - - £29,834,484 £39,405,705
2. Property from Houses - - - - 11,913,513 16,259,399
3. Amount of Tithes - . - . 2,012,064 2,732,898
4. Profits from Manors - - - - 43,521 71,672
5. Fines on Leases - - - . - -72,502 216,546
6. Profits of Quarries - - - . 32,456 70,378
7. Profits of Mines - - . - - 363,853 678,786
8. Profits of Iron Works - - - 84,615 647,686
9

. General Profits, etc. - - . - 477,762 65,260

£44,834,770 £60,148,330

DISTRESS, DISCONTENT, AND DISTURBANCES = 325

farmers from getting on the land, and caused the discontinuance
of manure, excessive cropping, and the impoverishment, even the
abandonment, of the heavier soils. To add to the difficulties of
clay farmers, the rot ret 1830-1, which is described as the most
disastrous on record, ‘swept away two million sheep.” Every-
where wages were lowered and men dismissed. Work became
so scarce that, in spite of the fall of prices, starvation stared the
agricultural labourer in the face. Distress bred discontent, and
discontent disturbances, which were fostered by political agitation.
While the Luddites broke up machinery, gangs of rural labourers
destroyed threshing machines, or avenged the fancied conspiracy
of farmers by burning farm-houses, stacks, and ricks, or wrecking
the shops of butchers and bakers. In the riots of 1830-31, when
“Swing ’”’ and his proselytes were at work, agrarian fires blazed
from Dorsetshire to Lincolnshire.

The evidence before the Select Committee of 1836 shows that
prosperity was beginning to revive. But the long period of
depression left its permanent mark on the relations of landlord
and tenant, as well as on the conditions of rural society. It was
not merely that progress had been lost, or that much of the land
was impoverished, or that farm buildings fell into ruinous con-

dition. A great expenditure was needed to reorganise the industry,
and it was the owner of the land who found the money. Necessity

compelled landed proprietors to realise their position. Tenants

had little capital left; they were also more cautious of risks.
Recent_experience had _created_a_ profound distrust_of long leases.

Without security of tenure for a prolonged term _of years, no man

of ordinary prudence would make an outlay on the costly works
which his predecessors had eagerly undertaken. It was now that
the distinction becomes clearly marked between landlord’s and
tenant’s improvements. Even in the latter class, it was already
evident that, where the benefits were not exhausted at the expira-
tion of the tenancy, compensation was payable, and that local
customs afforded insufficient protection. On these new lines agri-
culture once more began to advance. At the accession of Queen)
Victoria the worst of the crisis was over. Rents had been adjusted
to changed conditions. The industry had been relieved from some
of the exceptional taxation. The Tithe Commutation Act of 1836
had removed a great obstacle to progress. The new Poor Law of
1834 reduced the burden of the rates, and began to re-establish the

—

326 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION AND POOR LAW

self-respect of the labourer. The rapid growth of the manufac-
turing population not only created_an_increasing demand for

agricultural produce, but_relieved the glut of the labour-market.
To small_freeholders, whether gentry, yeoman-farmers, or

peasant proprietors, the Napoleonic war, with its crushing load of

taxation and subsequent collapse of prices, had been fatal. The

evidence before the Agricultural Committee of 1833 proves that
some still held their own in every county. But if was in the first
thirty years of the nineteenth century that their numbers dwindled
most rapidly. Some had consulted their pecuniary interests by
selling their land at fancy prices, which they took into business.
Others sold and embarked their capital as tenant-farmers in hiring
larger areas of land, on which they could take fuller advantage of
the price of corn. Those who remained on their own estates were
for the most part ruined. Many had raised mortgages to buy
more land, or to improve their properties, or to put their children
out in the world. Prices fell; but the private debt, as well as the
public burdens, remained. The struggle was brief; farming
deteriorated ; buildings fell out of repair; creditors pressed ;
finally the estate was sold. Even where land was free from charges,
owners could not stand up against the burden of poor-rates, which
was most crushing to those who employed no labour but their own.
“That respectable class of English yeomanry,” writes Glover? in
1817, ‘“‘ whose fathers from generation to generation have lived on
the same spot and cultivated the same farms are now rapidly

dwindling into poverty and decay, sinking themselves into _the
class_of paupers.” The purchasers were not men of their own

class. After 1812 small capitalists no longer invested their savings
in land. Their place as buyers was taken by large laridowners or
successful traders. In Yorkshire the number of small proprietors
was dwindling ; formerly, if one freeholder went, another took his
place ; but this had now ceased to be the case. The same report
is made of Shropshire, Worcestershire, and Wiltshire. In Kent
and Somersetshire it is stated that, though many freeholders
retained their land, it was only by the practice of the most rigorous
self-denial and by entirely ceasing to employ labour. Throughout

1 In 1837 the expenditure dropped to the lowest point as yet recorded in the
century, £4,044,741.

2 Observations on the Present State of Pauperism, etc. (Pamphleteer, vol. x.
p- 385).

ALLOWANCES IN AID OF WAGES~— 327

the country, it is evident that most of the small landowners, who,
in addition to taxes and rates, had to pay annuities or interest on
mortgages, were forced to sell their properties. Everywhere large
estates were built up on the ruin of small proprietors.

~ Morally, if not materially, no class suffered more from the pro- ~
Jonged period of depression than agricultural labourers. They
had bitter reason to deplore the shortsighted humanity which in
the last twenty years of the eighteenth century had swept away
the old barriers against pauperism.t_ Where Gilbert’s Act had been
adopted, every man was now secure of employment from the
parish or, in any case, of maintenance. In every parish, also,
outdoor relief for the able-bodied poor was now compulsory on the
overseers. Already in some districts men out of regular work
were ‘‘ on the Rounds,” offering their labour from house to house,
paid, if employed, partly by the householder, partly by the parish,
and if unemployed, wholly by the parish. Even men in full employ-
ment were drawn within the net. When in 1795-6 the price of
provisions rose to famine height, wages were supplemented by
allowances from the rates. A scale of these allowances was pro-
claimed by the Berkshire magistrates, proportioned to the price
of bread and the size of families. From the wages of the unmarried
labourer, which were zero, the scale ascended, varying with fluctua-
tions in the cost of the quartern loaf and the number of the children
of the married labourer. Similar scales of allowances were adopted
in many other counties. Thus able-bodied men, whether in or out
of work, became dependent on the rates. That, from the first,
these allowances delayed the natural rise of wages, lowered earnings
by making the needs of unmarried men the most important factor,
and encouraged improvident marriages, is certain. But these evils
were held in check till 1813. So long as the war and the high prices
continued, the demand for labour was brisk; distress was prac-
tically confined to those who suffered from enclosures, or from the
decline of local industries other than the cultivation of the land.
Agricultural wages rose substantially ; employment increased owing
to the extension of tillage ; even the high prices of provisions affected
labourers less than might have been expected, since the provisions,
in several parts of the country, were supplied to them at a lower
cost than the market rates. Except for winter unemployment the
allowance system was sparingly used. But during the depression

1See Appendix II. The Poor Law.

328 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION AND POOR LAW

farmers were driven to economise in their labour bills. Wages
were greatly reduced or even ceased altogether. The replies to
the Circular Letter of the Board of Agriculture insist on the deplor-
able scarcity of employment. Preston! speaks of the daily
increase in the number of paupers, and of “a large part of the
community .. . in want of employment though willing to labour.”
‘“* At no period in the memory of man,” writes Jacob,” “ has there
been so great a portion of industrious agricultural labourers
absolutely destitute as at the present moment.’ It was now that
the Poor Law was most perniciously relaxed ; now also that the
demoralising system of allowances became the most conspicuous
feature in its administration.

The immediate effects of the depressed condition of agriculture
was a great reduction it in the rates of wages, and in the demand for
permanent, labour. Unless he farmer could lessen his costs of

Law, as as ay was hee o in 1813-34, in two. ‘ways ca came to > to ‘his
assistance. It enabled him to reduce wages to the lowest possible
point, because it made e good t the deficienc cy out of allowances from,
the rates. Men discharged as supernumeraries were taken on again
as soon as they were on the poor-book. It also provided him with
an inexhaustible supply of cheap and temporary labour. Bound
to defray the whole cost of maintaining the able-bodied poor, the
parish gladly accepted any payment, however small, in part relief
of their liability. It became almost impossible for a farmer to
keep a man in permanent employment at reasonable wages. If
he did, he was only saving the rates for neighbours, who put their
hands into his pockets to pay their labour bills. Sometimes the
ratepayers in the parish arranged among themselves to employ
and pay a number of men proportionate to the rateable value of
their property. Sometimes the parish agreed with employers to
sell the labour of so many paupers at a given sum, and paid the
men the difference between the agreed price and the scale allowance
awarded to them according to the cost of bread and the number
of their children. Sometimes the paupers were paraded by the
overseers on a Monday morning, and the week’s labour of each

1 Review of the Present Ruined Condition, etc., by R. Preston, M.P. (1816),
(Pamphleteer, vol. vii. p. 129).

2 Inquiry into the Causes of the Agricultural Distress, by W. Jacob, F.R.S.
(1817), (Pamphleteer, vol x. p. 411).

DEMORALISATION OF LABOUR, 329

individual was offered at auction to the highest bidder. Sometimes
the parish contracted for the execution of a piece of work at a given
sum, and performed it by pauper labour, paying the men according
to the allowance scale. If men were still unemployed, they were
formed into gangs under overseers, occupied in more or less unpro-
ductive work ; it was among these men that the riots of 1830-1
are said to have originated.}

Against the mass of subsidised labour, free labourers could not
hope to compete. It was so cheap that men who tried to retain
their independence were undersold. ‘Those who had saved money -
or bought a cottage, could not be placed on the poor-book ; they
were obliged to strip themselves bare, and become paupers, before
they could .get employment. Every agency that could promote
the spread of pauperism seemed brought into play. The demoralisa-
tion gradually extended from the southern counties to the North.
In the most practical fashion, labourers were taught the lessons
that improvidence paid better than thrift ; that their rewards did
not depend on their own exertions; that sobriety and efficiency
had no special value above indolence and vice. All alike had the
same right to be maintained at the ratepayers’ cost. Prudence
and self-restraint were penalised. The careful were unemployed,
the careless supported by the parish; the more recklessly a man
married and begot children, the greater his share of the comforts
of life. The effect was seen in the rapid growth of population.
Among unmarried women morality was discouraged, and un-
chastity subsidised. The more illegitimate children, the larger the
allowance from the parish ; at Swaffham a woman with five illegi-
timate children was in receipt of 18s. a week. The demoralisation
was so complete that it threatened to overthrow the whole social
fabric. Voluntary pauperism became a profession, and a paying
one. Recipients considered themselves as much entitled to parish
allowances as they would have been to wages that they had earned
by their industry. A generation was springing up which knew
no source of income but poor relief. When once the spirit of
independence and self-respect was numbed, and the instincts of
parental responsibility and filial obligation were weakened, a
pauper’s life, with its security of subsistence, its light labour, its
opportunities of idleness, had attractions for the vicious and easy-

1 Por these varieties of the Labour Rate, the Roundsmen and Parish EKm-
ployment, see the Report on the Poor Laws (1834), pp. 42, 31-32, 36.

330 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION AND POOR LAW

going. Riots were not always protests against the existing system ;
they were sometimes means of enforcing its continuance, and
parochial allowances were maintained by the establishment of a
reign of terror, by threats, violence, and incendiarism.1

Rural conditions were fast becoming intolerable. Fortunately,
there still remained a leaven of agricultural labourers who resented
pauper dependence as a curse and a disgrace. Fortunately, many
farmers were learning by experience that cheap labour was bad
labour, and that quantity was no efficient substitute for quality.
Fortunately, also, there were districts which a wiser administration
of the Poor Law had rescued from the general demoralisation. In
four parishes, Southwell, Bingham, Uley, and Llangattock, the
principle had been adopted, with marked success, of refusing relief
to the able-bodied, except in well-regulated workhouses. Some
sixty others had been practically depauperised (e.g. Welwyn, Leck-
hampstead, and Carlisle) by stopping allowances, and exacting
hard work, at low pay, under strict supervision, as a condition of
parish relief. On the other hand, the parish of Cholesbury in
Buckinghamshire afforded the typical illustration of the extreme
consequences to which the existing system was necessarily leading.
Out of 98 persons, who had a settlement in the parish, 64 were in
receipt of poor relief, and the rates exceeded 24s. in the pound.
Only 16 acres remained in cultivation. When able-bodied paupers
were offered land, they refused it on the ground that they preferred
their present position. The parish was only able to exist by means
of rates-in-aid levied on other parishes in the hundred. Similar
conditions prevailed elsewhere. It was evident that the fund
from which the rates were provided must become exhausted.
Rents were already disappearing. The Poor Law had destroyed
the confidence of tenants, deteriorated the moral character of the
labourer, forced large areas out of cultivation, driven capital to
seek investment everywhere but in land. A drastic remedy was
needed. In 1832 a Commission of Inquiry was appointed to examine
into existing conditions, and suggest the lines of legislative reform.

On the recommendations of this Commission was based the Act
of 1834 “for the Amendment and better Administration of the
Laws relative to the Poor in England and Wales.” A central
authority was constituted to regulate local administration. The

1 Hxtracts from the Information received by H.M. Commissioners as to... the
Poor Laws (1833), p. 3.

THE POOR LAW OF 1834 — 331

orders issued by the new authority proceeded on the main principle
of restoring the old Poor Law, without the relaxations which the
legislation and practice of George III. had introduced. The
workhouse test for the able-bodied was revived. If a man chose
to depend for subsistence on the parish rates, instead of on his
own resources, he was obliged to enter the workhouse and submit
to its regulations. Out-door relief for the able-bodied was dis-
couraged, and allowances in aid of wages were prohibited. At the
same time the laws of settlement were modified, in order that
labour might become more mobile and more easily transferable in
obedience to the laws of demand and supply. The effect of these
and other changes was soon manifest. Expenditure upon poor
relief fell from £7,036,968 in 1832 to £4,044,741 in 1837. Wages
rose, though for many years they remained miserably low. Land-
owners again poured their capital into the land ; farmers regained
confidence ; agricultural progress was resumed. The evidence laid
before the Select Committee of 1836 proves that signs of returning
prosperity were beginning to appear, and that the distress was now
practically confined to clay land.

CHAPTER XVL

TITHES.

The incidence of tithes under the old law; the historical origin of tithes ;
a free-will offering; a customary payment; the appeal to conscience ;
ecclesiastical penalties for non-payment; a legal liability: tithes as
parochial endowments ; the Reformation ; the collection of tithes in
kind unpopular, and expensive to tithe-owners; substituted forms of
payment ; the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 ; its object and machinery.

A sERIous obstacle to the progress or recovery of agriculture was
presented by the incidence of tithe upon the produce of the land.
Tithe-owners were sleeping partners in the cultivation of the soil.
They contributed neither capital nor labour to the enterprise of the
farm; they risked nothing in the venture. But they shared the
profits derived from increased productiveness. While agriculture
remained stationary, the burden was light. As soon as farming
began to advance, and to demand a greater outlay, the grievance
was acutely felt. In times of prosperity the incidence on produce
discouraged improvement. In days of adversity, when every penny
was important to struggling agriculturists, it retarded recovery.
Since the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836, much of the ancient
law of tithes has retained only an antiquarian interest. But the
long history of the payment has left an indelible mark on rural life.
Historically, tithes were a tenth part, taken yearly, of all produce
of the land, of the stock nourished upon the land, and of the clear
profits of the personal industry of tradesmen, artificers, millers,
and fishermen. In other words, tithes were, as lawyers distinguished
them by their sources, predial, mixed, or personal. Predial tithes
'. were, derived directly from the soil, such as corn, hay, beans, peas,
turnips, hemp, flax, saffron, rushes, fruits, and wood of various
kinds. Mixed tithes arose from the increase or produce of animals
maintained’ by the fruits of the earth, as of cattle, sheep, pigs,
poultry or their eggs, wool, milk or cheese. Personal tithes on the

ORIGINALLY A FREE-WILL OFFERING 333

clear gain of the labour of man had early fallen into disuse. Manu-
facturers were never liable for the payment, which only survived in
such forms as a tenth of the fisherman’s catch, or a tenth of the
miller’s clear profits on meal ground in all but ancient mills.
Another classification, distinguished between great and small tithes
according to the nature of the produce on which they fell. Thus
great or rectorial tithes included corn, beans, peas, hay, and wood ;
all the other predial tithes, together with all mixed tithes, were
small or vicarial.

The legal obligation to pay tithes, as distinct from the older moral
duty of giving them, dates back to a remote period of history. No
real dispute arises respecting their origin, until the point is reached
where the offering passed from a free-will gift into a liability enforced
by legal penalties. From the fourth century onwards, throughout
the Christian world, the practice of dedicating fractional parts of
produce to religious objects was recognised by the faithful as a moral
duty. As a matter of conscience, the gift was enjoined by Councils
of the Western Church, and enforced by appeals to the rewards
and punishments of religion. Thus the practice gradually acquired
something of the binding force of custom. The final stage was
reached when the State recognised as a civil duty the religious
practice of giving tithes, and compelled payment, not by appeals to
conscience, nor even by spiritual penalties, but by temporal sanctions.
This last step, by which tithes passed from moral obligations into
legal liabilities, was taken at different dates by the different countries
of Christian Europe.

Before the landing of Augustine in England (597), and before the
introduction of Christianity into this country, the moral duty of
giving tithes had been enjoined on the Continent by at least one
Church Council. As a matter of conscience, therefore, the first
missionaries to Anglo-Saxon England preached the consecration of
a tenth of produce to the service of God, and as a religious custom
the practice was established by their successors among their Chris-
tian followers. The appeal was the more forcible since it came
from men who were believed to hold the keys of heaven and of hell.
But there were as yet no divisions into parishes, no parish churches,
no parochial clergy, and no parochial endowments. The cathedral,
monastery, and “‘mother church,” generally conventual, of the local-
ity, were mission centres, from which radiated itinerant missioners,
who preached under rude crosses the rudiments of Christianity

334 TITHES

to the inhabitants of outlying districts. Into the hands of the
Bishop or monastic bodies were paid all the offerings of the faithful.
The married clergy, outside the cloister, were slowly and with
difficulty obtained. They were for the most part ignorant, uncouth
men, recruited from the lower classes of native converts, entrusted
only with the humbler offices of the ministry. They taught the
Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed in remote hamlets, watched
by the bedsides of dying penitents, and in special cases administered
the rites of baptism. It is not strange that, on earth at least, their
lowly labours should have been ignored or forgotten. Very different
was the fate of the monastic bodies. To them fell power, riches,
credit. Kings were their nursing-fathers, queens their nursing
mothers ; the wealthy nobles vied with one another in the munifi-
cence of theirendowments. In comparison with existing civilisation,
the monastic bodies attained a standard of wealth, refinement and
culture which was at least as high as that of later times. They laid
acre to acre, and field to field. For miles round their farms, barns,
flocks, herds, fish-ponds, and dovecotes dotted the country. They
entranced the senses by the beauty of their architecture, their
music, their ritual; they commanded respect by their learning ;
they inspired awe by the austerities of their lives. They alone
could offer an inviolable resting-place for the dead, since there were
no parochial burial-grounds, and they practically monopolised
rights of sepulture. Thus in death, as well as in life, they appealed
irresistibly to the favour of the world.

Till the closing period of the Anglo-Saxon Church, there were,
as has been said, no resident parochial clergy. Ecclesiastical
organisation proceeded downwards, not upwards. It was provincial,
diocesan, conventual, before it became local and parochial. The
cathedrals of the dioceses and the conventual churches of the
monasteries at first provided for the religious wants of the people.
Yet the material was ready for the introduction of the parochial
system. ‘Townships suggested the necessary divisions, and village
communities, on the self-sufficing system of these agrarian societies,
had probably been accustomed to provide for their pagan priests.
From the first the rulers of the Church felt the need of continuous
local ministrations, though, probably, the earliest advances towards
a parochial system were forced upon the country by external causes.
From the ninth century onwards Danish invasions struck a series
of staggering blows at the monastic organisation. Monasteries

ORIGIN OF PAROCHIAL ORGANISATIONS 335

were the first objects of the invaders’ attack ; their wealth and their
defencelessness made them an easy, as well as a tempting, prey.
They were sacked, pillaged, burned, and their inmates either dis-
persed or massacred. To save rural Christianity from extinction
by a relapse into paganism it became necessary to encourage local
efforts, to favour the erection of private chapels, to enlarge the
powers of the rural priests or chaplains by whom they were served,
even to consecrate as burial-grounds the precincts in which they
stood. Thus a permanent resident clergy began to grow up on
the rural estates of great nobles in connection with private chapels
and oratories. With the gradual extension of this local provision
for permanent religious ministrations begins the increased importance
attached to the payment of tithes as parochial endowments.

Early documents confirm this explanation of the growth of
parochial tithes. On the one side, the Church, backed by all her
supposed power over the destinies of man, urged the consecration
of tenths to the service of God. On the other hand, the earthly
influence of the Crown, sometimes by royal admonitions, coupled
with threats of loss of favour, sometimes by attesting and confirm-
ing the decrees of synods, sometimes even by treaties of peace with
the Danes, supported the demand of the Church, and assisted in
making the custom of paying tithes universal. Under this double
pressure the practice grew. But it was not till 944 that King
Edmund’s synod at London for the first time made non-payment of
tithes an ecclesiastical offence to be punished by excommunication.
Henceforward the Church claimed as an ecclesiastical right what she
had hitherto received, if at all, as a free-will offering. The moral
duty had become a religious obligation, enforced by spiritual
penalties.

The payment of tithes was not yet a legal liability, enforced by
temporal sanctions. Nor were tithes, or any part of them, as yet,
ecclesiastically or legally, appropriated as parochial endowments.
But the times were ripening for both changes. Voluntary dedica-
tions of free-will offerings had been acted upon by the religious
bodies to whom they had been made. On the faith of their con-
tinuance cathedrals had been erected and a diocesan system
established ; monasteries had been founded ; manorial churches
had been built and some local provision made for their service :
the dim outline of a future parochial system could be discerned.
By these voluntary dedications the original donors had alienated

336 TITHES

portions of their own property. If neither appeals to conscience
nor threats of excommunication sufficed to obtain payment, the
State might not unreasonably be asked to enforce it as a legal
liability, either against the original donors or against their repre-
sentatives who had inherited estates already subject to the dedica-
tion of the consecrated portion.

In the reign of Edgar the Peaceful, during the primacy of Dunstan,
the payment of tithes was made a legal liability, universal in its
application. At the same time a step was taken towards the
appropriation of a portion to the maintenance of district churches
of a particular class. At Andover, in 970, the king and his Witen-
agemot issued an ecclesiastical ordinance, which was to all intents
and purposes an Act of Parliament. The ordinance creates no tithes.
On the contrary it presupposes their existence. It regulates the
times when they were to be paid, and makes their payment a legal
liability, enforced by a pecuniary penalty and a power of distraint.
It does not profess to give them to the clergy. The first article
ran as follows :—‘‘ That God’s churches be entitled to every right ;
and that every tithe be rendered to the old minster, to which the
district belongs ; and be then so paid, both from a thane’s inland (i.e.
land granted in the lord’s own hands), and from geneat-land (1.e.
land granted out for services), so as the plough traverses it.” Un-
doubtedly, the law not only protects the Church in the possession
of tithes already dedicated, but transforms the moral duty, religious
custom, and ecclesiastical obligation into a legal liability. A
reason is suggested by the passages which regulate their division.
The general right of the “ old minster,’ the mother church of the
district—whether collegiate or conventual—to the local tithes was
recognised. But an exception was allowed. If any landowner had
built on his private estate a church with a burial-place attached,
he was to assign to its support one-third of the local tithes. The
remaining two-thirds were to be paid to the “ mother church.”
If the landowner had built on his estate a church or oratory without
a burial-place, the local tithes went to the “ mother church,” and
he might provide privately for the priest of his private chapel. In
other words, the old diocesan and monastic system still remained in
force ; but, side by side with it, had grown up manorial churches,
providing ‘shrift districts’ with burial-grounds, and therefore
claiming some more permanent support than the caprice of the
builder or of his successors. They were not yet parish churches ;

CONSECRATION OF PARISH CHURCHES 337

but they were their original type, and in the private chapels or
* field churches ” of the greater landowners are seen the germs of a
further extension of a parochial system.

The law of Edgar remained unaltered at the Conquest. Practically
re-enacted by Canute and by Edward the Confessor, it was accepted
by William the Conqueror. As years passed, district or parochial
churches were multiplied by their voluntary founders in various
parts of the country. Some were built by kings or great nobles as
private chapels ; some by bishops, some by monastic houses, some
by landowners, some by freemen on the landowners’ estates.
Church-building proceeded on no general system, and without any
uniformity of date. There was a gradual growth under varying
circumstances ; but the people, acting through the legislature in a
national capacity, neither built, nor endowed, nor repaired these
churches. As with the buildings, so with the endowments. They
were gradually appropriated to particular churches, in different
proportions, without either system or uniformity. No priest serving
a district could enforce any claim to local tithes, except for the third
which was appropriated only to churches with burial-grounds.
Though the payment had become a legal liability, the dedication of
tithes to particular parochial uses is, therefore, still unexplained.
Something more remained to be done. ‘The final steps were taken
between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.

The chief instrument by which local endowments were secured
to parish churches was consecration. A founder desired to build a
church on his estate, and to have it consecrated. But the bishop
could refuse to consecrate, unless proper provision was made for its
maintenance. Between the bishop and the founder, who in building
the church was a free agent, there might be bargaining. There
might also be opposition from outside. The neighbouring monastery
perhaps resented the intrusion of a new church and a new priest
into the field which it had regarded as its own. But at no stage,
either in the bargain or in the opposition, does the national will
express itself. Throughout, the founder was at first practically
master of the situation. There was no compulsion on him to build
a church at all. If he did, not only did he himself nominate and
invest the priest, with or without the consent of the bishop, but he
could delay appointing to vacancies, and thus leave the church
without services. Even where local endowment had been secured

to the parochial church at consecration, the system was thus in-
Y

338 TITHES

complete. Both points were settled by ecclesiastical discipline at
the close of the twelfth century, The necessity for institution by
the bishop was established, and the bishop’s right to appoint to
vacant benefices, after a certain period of delay, was vindicated.

A further step was still required. The legal liability for the
payment of tithes was satisfied if, with the exception of the third
secured to the parochial churches which possessed burial-grounds,
payment was made to any ecclesiastical body. A patron might
increase the pittances of the poor priests at his door, or offer it to
the collegiate cathedral, or heap the grain in the barn of a monastery,
or sell the tithes issuing from his estate to any religious body that
he chose, or even, by collusion, store the corn in the granaries of
himself or his lay friends. Even after the formation of parishes
had become general, and after the claim of parochial churches was
commonly recognised, it was still possible, and still usual, to grant
the local tithes to distant houses of religion. The same causes were
at work which in Anglo-Saxon times sacrificed the secular clergy
to the monasteries. Norman landlords preferred to assign their
tithes to monastic bodies, with whom they were more in sympathy
than with the native priests of rural districts. The increase of
monasticism after the Conquest necessarily alienated a large part
of the local tithes which naturally would have increased the local
provision for religious services. This option on the part of land-
owners is inconsistent with the theory of the endowment of parishes
by an exercise of the national will, expressed in some general law.
It was not till the thirteenth century, and then not by any statute
or Act of Parliament, but by the growth of custom, that the land-
owner’s freedom of choice was limited. No doubt the growth of
the custom was aided by the practice of such specific dedications
of tithes to the parochial church as those of Hay and Exhall. At
common law the courts presumed that the parish church was
primé facie entitled to the tithes which issued from the lands of the
parish. By this presumption the burden of proof was thrown on
tithe-payers or other claimants to show that the local tithes had
been either paid to some collegiate or conventual body for so long
a period as to create a prescriptive right, or had been by express
grant alienated to some other religious body.

It was to custom that the parochial clergy appealed; other
claimants relied on immemorial usage or express grant. This fact
is in itself of extreme importance. Had any enactment of the

TITHES AS PAROCHIAL ENDOWMENTS 339

national assembly established the primd facie right of the parochial
clergy to the tithes of the parish, they would have relied, not on
custom, but on statute. If, as parochial endowments, tithes were
statutory in their origin, we should expect to find that they commence
with the legislation by which they are alleged to be created, and
that the payment was certain in practice, uniform in amount,
identical in source. If, on the other hand, the endowment of parish
churches with tithes originated in a series of voluntary dedications,
and if the State merely protected a property which was none the
less real because it began as a free-will offering, we should expect
to find that customary payments preceded any recorded legislation,
and were uncertain in practice, varying in amount, irregular in
source. Historical facts confirm the second view. The voluntary
payment of tithes in this country preceded, by upwards of three
centuries, parochial organisation, as well as both ecclesiastical and
secular legislation. The first secular enactment on the subject
assumes the prior existence of the charge, and for more than two
centuries afterwards allows tithe-payers a wide freedom in the
choice of the religious body to which payment was made. When
this freedom was limited, it was restricted not by legislation but
by the growth of custom. Both in respect of the persons to whom
tithes were due, and of the produce on which they were payable,
the practice was not certain, but uncertain. The amount paid was
varying, not uniform. ‘The sources from which the payment was
derived, are not identical, but irregular. If, therefore, the State
endowed parochial churches with tithes, all those signs, which
would naturally accompany such a national act, are conspicuously
absent. On the other hand, all those signs, which naturally
indicate the legislative protection of customary practices, are con-
conspicuously present.

The gradual, piecemeal, and discretionary endowment of parochial
churches with the tithes of the parish has left its mark on the
existing organisation. It explains, for instance, as no other assump-
tion can explain, the freedom from the payment which the “ Hall,”
“Court,” or ““ Manor” farm frequently enjoyed ; it lies at the root
of the distinction between rectorial and vicarial tithes, and between
ecclesiastical appropriators and lay impropriators ; it suggests the
reason why land in one parish should be charged with tithes for the
benefit of the church of another parish. Many of the old anomalies
in the law of tithes have been smoothed into comparative uniformity

340 TITHES

by the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836. But the previous history
of the charge renders it difficult to believe that the nation ever by a
legislative action endowed parochial churches with the local tithes.

The Reformation left the parochial organisation untouched. But
it made an important change, which greatly embittered objections to
the payment of tithes. It alienated a considerable portion of the
tithes from religious uses. Rectories, together with the local tithes,
might be, and often had been, ‘“‘ appropriated ’’ to a monastery or
other religious corporation, which appointed vicars to discharge the
religious duties attached to the endowment. Originally the stipend
of the vicar was arbitrary. But gradually it was recognised that
the person responsible for religious ministrations in the parish ought
to have some fixed determinate means of support. This was gener-
ally made by endowing the vicarage with land, or by assigning to
it some portion of the great tithes, or the whole of the small tithes,
or by a combination of all three methods. At the Dissolution of
the Monasteries all the rectorial tithes in their possession, which
had not been already allocated to the support of vicarages, passed
into the hands of the Crown, and were subsequently granted out
by letters patent to lay subjects. These lay grantees were called
‘* lay rectors,’’ or “* impropriators,”’ in order to distinguish them from
the original “‘ appropriators,’’ who were of necessity spiritual persons
or ecclesiastical corporations. When the Tithe Commutation Act
was passed in 1836, and tithes of produce were commuted into rent-
charges, it was found that nearly one-fourth of the annual value
had thus been diverted from religious purposes into the hands of
laymen.’ There is strong evidence that the lay impropriators or
their lessees, who were generally absentees, and without other
interests in the parish, exacted their legal dues with a strictness
which was relatively rare among clerical tithe-owners.

Tithes in themselves, and apart from their incidence, could scarcely
be regarded as a legitimate grievance by either owners or occupiers of
land, especially as no attack was as yet made on the religious objects
to which they were devoted. No landlords could honestly believe

1 The net annual value of the tithes, after a deduction of 40 per cent. from
the gross value, was in 1836 estimated at £4,053,985 6s. 8id. Of this total
sum £962,289 15s. were then in the hands of lay impropriators. But this
figure does not take into account the large amount of lay tithes which had
been, in the course of three centuries, extinguished by purchases on the part
of landowners, or bought and given back to the parochial clergy, or restored
by those who, like Spelman, considered their retention by laymen a sacrilege.

TITHES IN KIND Ss 341

that the payment robbed them of any part of the rents to which
they were justly entitled. For centuries, in every transfer of land,
whether by purchase or inheritance, the estimated value of tithes
had been previously deducted from the value of the estate so bought
or inherited. Nor could any tenant honestly complain that tithes
increased the burden of his rent. Land only commands what it is
worth. If 100 acres of land fetched £1 per acre, it made no pecuniary
difference to the farmer whether he paid £100 to the landowner or
£90 to the landowner and £10 to the tithe-owner. But the real prac-
tical grievance was the incidence of the charge upon the produce of
the land. In this way tithes become a charge which was increased by
good farming, or diminished by bad,—a tax on every additional outlay
of money and labour,—a check upon enterprise and improvement.
Tithes in kind were admittedly out of date. Though rents and
wages had long been placed on a money basis, a tithe-owner could
still exact payment in the ancient fashion. As a fact, however,
the Reports to the Board of Agriculture (1793-1815) prove that, at
the close of the eighteenth century, comparatively little tithe was
collected in kind. Especially was this the case when the tithe was
in the hands of clerical owners. For this change of practice there
were many reasons. Collection in kind was extremely unpopular.
Where it prevailed, farmers showed their dislike to the system in
various ways. Many tenants so greatly resented putting money
into the pockets of tithe-owners that they preferred to lose it them-
selves, and refused to plough up pastures which would have been
more profitable under tillage. Sometimes the tenant left his tith-
able land unmanured. A Hertfordshire farmer, for instance,
occupied land in two parishes, in one of which a reasonable composi-
tion was paid, while, in the other, tithe was collected in kind. The
result was that he farmed one part of his occupation with spirit on
improved methods, and that the dung-cart never reached the other
portion of his land. Sometimes the tenants made the collection as
inconvenient as possible. Thus a Hampshire farmer gave notice
to the tithe-owner that he was about to draw a field of turnips.
When the tithe-owner’s servants, horses and waggons had come on
the land, the farmer drew ten turnips, gave one to the tithing-man,
and said that he would let his master know when he drew any more.
In a wet season the collection was often the cause of heavy loss.
Notice had to be given to the tithe-owner to set out the tithe.
Farmers risked a lawsuit, if they carried their crops before the

342 TITHES

process was completed. Consequently, in catchy seasons the rain
often outstripped the slow progress of the tithing-man, and the
crops were ruined.

The collection of tithes in kind, regulated as it was by the subtle
and technical distinctions of case-made law, provoked endless bicker-
ings, disputes and litigation. If tithe-owners were clergymen,
living in their parishes, they naturally welcomed any reasonable
system of payment which enabled them to live on friendly terms
with their parishoners. Non-resident pluralists, or lay impropriators
who let out the tithes to proctors, could better afford to defy the
public opinion of the neighbourhood. But they were not always
proof against business arguments. The heavy cost of collecting
tithes in kind suggested the commercial prudence of adopting other
arrangements. Barns must be built and repaired for the storage of
produce. The weekly wages of servants must be met. Waggons and
horses, with the necessary cart-sheds and stabling must be provided
and maintained. The cost, not only of collecting, but of threshing,
dressing and marketing corn had to be met. The net profits of a
crop were thus reduced to a minimum by the duplication of expenses.
Various forms of payment were therefore substituted for collection
in kind. Sometimes, and especially under enclosures of open fields,
tithes were extinguished by allotments of land of equivalent value.
Sometimes it was considered that the increase of the area of land
held in mortmain or the difficult position of clerical landowners
were objections to the exchange of tithes for their equivalent in
landed property, and a corn-rent was substituted. Sometimes
tithes were commuted for a composition calculated on the acre or
on the pound of rent paid, and either fixed for a term of years or
based on an annual estimate of the value of the crops. Sometimes
farmers had the option of taking the tithable portion at the sur-
veyor’s valuation or leaving it to be collected by the tithe-owner.
Sometimes, in a few fortunate parishes, a modus had by immemorial
usage taken the place of tithes. Moduses were payments of definite
sums, which had been permanently fixed in amount at a time when
the purchasing power of money had been far greater than it had
since become. They were, therefore, advantageous to the tithe-
payer. A modus of 1d. on every fleece shorn in the parish was no
real equivalent to a tenth of the value of the wool.?

' For various methods of collecting tithes in the different counties 1793-
1815, see Appendix VII.

THE BARREN LANDS ACT _ 343

No variety in forms of payment could entirely remove the reason-
able objection to a tithe of produce in kind. So long as farming
remained stagnant the grievance was imperceptible. It became
acute when progressive methods of agriculture were generally
adopted. Here and there tithe-owners recognised the altered con-
ditions by allowing deductions from their tithes to meet the cost of
all purchased manures. But the practice was by no means general.
The fair adjustment of compositions was in other ways extremely
difficult. Tithable crops were of greater value to farmers, who
could collect and market them at a small additional expense, than
they were to tithe-owners, whose necessary outlay diminished their
net profits by a half. The difference allowed a large margin for
dispute. Even when compositions were reasonable, they tithed
the increased produce of improved husbandry. Land, highly
cultivated, might be valued at 3s. 6d. an acre; soil of the same natural
quality, under slovenly management, might escape with ls. 6d. In
the case of wastes, the objection to tithes on produce was strongly
felt as an obstacle to improvement. When land, which at the best
had afforded only rough pasture, was reduced to cultivation, owners
and occupiers risked labour and money on a venture which might
succeed or fail. In either event tithe-owners were safe; they
profited by the success, and lost nothing by the failure. The legis-
lature had endeavoured to meet the case. Under the Barren Lands
Act,! barren heaths and waste grounds were exempted from tithes
for seven years after they had been reduced for the first time to
cultivation. But the decisions of the law courts deprived improvers
of the benefits which they expected from the Act. Only land which
was so barren that it paid no tithe by reason of tts barrenness was
held to be exempt. The initial cost of draining fen-lands, or grub-
bing and stubbing wood-lands, or of paring and burning moors and
heaths was not to be taken into consideration. Whatever the cost
at which the land had been fitted for cultivation, the only question
to be asked was whether, when ploughed and sown, it was so naturally
fertile as to produce a crop, or so naturally barren that it would yield
nothing without an extraordinary expenditure on liming, chalking,
marling, dunging, or manuring. Only in the latter case could the
seven years’ exemption be legally claimed.

The law of tithes needed complete revision. Its inadequacy to
meet changed conditions had long been felt. The necessity for a

12 and 3 Ed, VI, ¢. 13,

344 TITHES

large expenditure of capital in order to recover the ground which
had been lost during a long period of disaster forced the question to
the front. In 1836 the difficulty was solved. Peel in 1835 had -
proposed the voluntary commutation of tithe. Lord John Russell,
adopting in his Bill the machinery which Peel had sketched, made
commutation compulsory. When once this point was decided,
party considerations were for the moment subordinated: Whig
and Tory loyally co-operated to frame a workable scheme. The
aim of legislators was to commute tithe of produce in kind for a
variable money payment charged on the land, to make the commuted
sum fluctuate with the purchasing power of money, to preserve the
existing relations between the values of tithable produce and the
cost of living. It never attempted to fix the payment, once and for
all, at the sum which represented the value that tithe then possessed.
On the contrary, it converted tithes into a corn-rent, fluctuating in
value according to the septennial average of the prices of wheat,
barley and oats.

The first step was to determine the value of the tithes ; the second
to adjust the purchasing power of the money payment at which
they were commuted.

Within a limited time tithe-owners and tithe-payers of any
parish might agree upon the total sum to be paid in lieu of tithes.
This agreement. was first to receive the assent of the patron ;
secondly, to be communicated to the bishop; and, thirdly, to be
approved and ratified by the Commissioners. If no agreement was
arrived at, a local enquiry was held on the spot by the Commissioners
or their assistants, who estimated the value of the tithe, taking as
their basis the actual receipts of the tithe-owner during the preceding
seven years; framed their draft award; deposited it for the in-
spection of interested parties ; and, finally, confirmed their award,
which from that time was binding upon tithe-owners and tithe-
payers.

The mode in which the purchasing power of money was intended
to be preserved was as follows. The average of the gross annual
value of the actual receipts of the tithe-owner was ascertained in
money for the seven preceding years. The net annual value,
arrived at by deducting all just expenses, was taken as the permanent
commutation of the great and small tithes of the parish. This net
sum was divided into three equal parts, and the average value for
the seven years ending with 1835 was taken for wheat, barley and

THE PRINCIPLE OF COMMUTATION 345

oats. It was then asked how many bushels of wheat could be
bought at cost price by one of these equal portions, how many of
barley by the second, how many of oats by the third. Each £100
of tithe was divided into three equal sums of £33 6s. 8d.; the
septennial averages for the three grains were respectively 7s. 04d.
for a bushel of wheat ; 3s. 114d. for a bushel of barley ; 2s. 9d. for
a bushel of oats. In 1836 at those prices £33 6s. 8d. bought 94°96
bushels of wheat, or 168°42 bushels of barley, or 242°42 bushels of
oats. These have been the fixed multipliers in use ever since.
Each year the average prices for the last seven years are multiplied
by these fixed quantities, and the result is the tithe rent charge for
the coming year. It will be noticed that the charge is affected
most by variations in the price of oats, and least by those of wheat.

One other point requires to be mentioned. Lord Althorp in 1833,
Sir Robert Peel in 1835, Lord John Russell in 1836 were agreed that
the payment should be transferred from occupiers to owners of land.
Section 80 of the Act of 1836 empowered tenants to deduct the rent-
charge from the rent payable to the landlord. But the section was
permissive only. For mutual convenience tenants paid the rent
charge direct to the tithe-owner, and their other rent to the landlord
was calculated on this basis. By the Tithe Rent Charge Recovery
Act of 1891 the tenant was no longer permitted to be the conduit-
pipe for the payment. ‘The liability to pay the tithe rent charge
was transferred to the landowner; the tithe-owner’s remedy of
distress was altered into a process through the county court; and,
instead of the corn averages absolutely determining the amount
of tithe rent charges, provision was made in certain cases for a
reduced payment when the charge exceeded a certain proportion of
the annual value of the land.

CHAPTER XVIL

HIGH FARMING. 1837-1874.

Condition of agriculture in 1837; current explanation of the distress ; pre-
paration for a new start in farming ; legislative changes ; development of
a railway system; live-stock in 1837; the general level of farming ;
foundation of the Royal Agricultural Society ; notable improvements,
1837-74; extension of drainage; purchase of feeding stuffs; discovery
of artificial fertilisers ; mechanical improvements and inventions ; Repeal
of the Corn Laws; the golden age from 1853 to the end of 1862; rapid
progress in the “ Fifties’; pedigree mania in stock-breeding.

THE reign of Queen Victoria began in the midst of a transition stage
from one state of social and industrial development to another.
A complete change of agricultural front was taking place, which
necessitated some displacement of the classes that had previously
occupied or cultivated the soil. The last ten years of the present
century have raised the question whether agriculturists are not now
passing through another transition stage which, like its predecessor,
may effect another agricultural revolution and result in another
disruption of rural society.

Roughly speaking, the first_thirty-seven years of the new reign
formed an era of advancing prosperity and progress, of rising rents
and profits, of the rapid multiplication of fertilising agencies, of
an expanding area of corn cultivation, of more numerous, better
bred, better fed, better housed stock, of varied improvements in
every kind of implement and machinery, of growing expenditure on
the making of the land by drainage, the construction of roads, the
erection of farm buildings, and the division into fields of convenient
size. So far as the standard of the highest sol, i is conene

of agricultural adversity —of faring Vin rents, fivindling profits, con-

———

AN OLD EXPLANATION OF DISTRESS 347

tracting areas of arable cultivation, diminishing stock, decreasing
expenditure on land improvement.

In 1837 the farming industry had passed through a quarter of a
century of misfortunes, aggravated by a disordered currency, bank
failures, adverse seasons, labour difficulties, agrarian discontent.
During times of adversity it has always been the practice to charge
landowners, farmers, and even labourers with extravagance, to trace
distress to their increased luxury, to attribute their domestic diffi-
culties to their less simple habits. The explanation is as old as the
hills. Arthur Young, writing in 1773 On the Present State of
Waste Lands, remarks that the landed gentry were beggared by
their efforts to rival their wealthier neighbours who had amassed
fortunes in trade. The rural frog burst in his efforts to equal the
proportions of the civic ox. ‘‘ The antient prospect which afforded
pleasure to twenty generations is poisoned by the pagodas and
temples of some rival neighbour ; some oilman who builds on the
solid foundation of pickles and herrings. At church the liveries
of a tobacconist carry all the admiration of the village ; and how
can the daughter of the antient but decayed gentleman stand the
competition at an assembly with the point, diamonds and tissues
of a haberdasher’s nieces?’ Their tenants did not escape from
similar charges. In 1573 Tusser had alluded to farmers with “ hawk
on hand ” who neglected their business for sport ; in the nineteenth
century it was said to be the hunting-field or the racecourse which
attracted them from the farm or the market. In 1649 Walter Blith
had attributed the rural depression of that day to the “ high
stomachs ” of the farmers. So in 1816 the wiseacres of the London
clubs vehemently contended that farmers had only to return from
claret to beer, and their wives from the piano to the hen-house,
and agricultural distress would be at an end. It was reserved for
an imaginative versifier in 1801 to charge them with soaking five-
pound notes instead of rusks in their port wine. Somewhat similar
in tone was the outcry against labourers. ‘‘ We hear,” writes
Borlase, the Cornish antiquary, in 1771, “ every day of murmurs of
the common people ; of want of employ ; of short wages ; of dear
provisions. There may be some reason for this ; our taxes are heavy
upon the necessaries of life ; but the chief reason is the extravagance
of the vulgar in the unnecessaries of life.’ Among the tinworkers
in his parish were three-score snuff-boxes at one time ; of fifty girls
above fifteen years old, forty-nine had scarlet cloaks. “There is

348 HIGH FARMING, 1837-1874

scarce a family in the parish, I mean of common labourers, but have
tea, once if not twice a day. . . . In short, all labourers live above
their conditions.”

The same explanations with regard to all classes of agriculturists
were repeated in 1837, and have been periodically offered ever since.
The diagnosis of disease would not be so popular if it were not easy
and to some extent true. It is, to say the least, madequate. When
the standard of living rises for all classes, agriculturists are not the
only men who spend money more lavishly than the prudence which
criticises after the event can justify. But the true explanation of _
the distress lay in the conditions already described. The old 1 instru-_
ment of farming had failed ; the new had not been perfected. An
agricultural _ revolution was in n_progress, which was none theless.
complete in its ‘operation because it was peaceful in its processes.

In 1837 agriculture was languishing.;.farming had retrograded ;
heavy clay-lands were either abandoned or foul, and.in.a-miserable—
state of cultivation. Indifferent pasture, when first ploughed, had
produced good corn crops from the accumulated mass of elements of
fertility which they had stored. But this savings bank of wealth
had been soon exhausted. At peace-prices half crops ceased to be
remunerative, and the newly ploughed arable area was now recover-
ing itself from exhaustion to grass as best it could without assistance.
Lighter soils had suffered comparatively little; turnips, and the
Norfolk system had helped the eastern counties to bear the stress of
the storm, yet, even there, farmers had “‘ had to put down their
chaises and their nags.”” Much of the progress made between 1790
and 1812 had been lost. Nor was this the worst feature. The
distrust which prevailed between farmers and their men had _ex-
tended to tenants and their landlords. Men who had contracted
to pay war rents from peace profits were shy of leases. _For-at-east
a generation confidence was shaken between landlord and tenant. '

The brighter . Side@to_the picture was that, in the midst of much”
suffering, the ground had J been prepared for new conditions. Small

yeomen, openfield farmers, and commoners could never have fed a
manufacturing population. They could not have initiated and would
not have adopted agricultural improvements, of which some were still
experimental, and of which all required an initial expenditure. It
was from these classes th